Книга - Immortal Bride

Immortal Bride
Lisa Childs


Unleash the untamed passions of the underworld in these deliciously wicked tales of paranormal romance.For generations, local residents have whispered about an evil menace lurking near the shore of the Lake of Tears.The recent murder of landowner Damien Gray's bride, Olivia, confirms the worst. Now, confused and heartbroken, Olivia's spirit survives death and seeks vengeance upon the man she desired more than life itself, the man she now suspects was her killer–Damien.But an angry shaman has his own vicious agenda, one that will bring Damien to understand his Native ancestry. Steamy passion and ancient vendettas will draw them ever deeper into a drama of a family's legacy, murder and a love so strong it can withstand even death.









She froze on the shore, unable to move—her gaze locked with his


Damien could see her.

This was what she’d wanted, Olivia reminded herself, as panic choked her. She had wanted him to see her. She needed him to see her in order to exact her revenge.

But when he lifted his arms and reached for her, the panic turned to fear. With dread, she turned to the lake. Every time she went back in, she had to fight harder to reach the surface—to leave those icy depths. But while she’d wanted him to see her, she wasn’t ready yet—she wasn’t strong enough to face him.

Even now, knowing what he had undoubtedly done to her, she wanted him….




LISA CHILDS


has been writing since she could first form sentences. At eleven she won her first writing award and was interviewed by the local newspaper. That story’s plot revolved around a kidnapping, probably something she wished on any of her six siblings. A Halloween birthday predestined a life of writing for the Nocturne line. She enjoys the mix of suspense and romance.

Readers can write to Lisa at P.O. Box 139, Marne, Michigan 49435, or visit her at her Web site, www.lisachilds.com.




Immortal Bride

Lisa Childs















www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)




Dear Reader,

I am a voracious reader myself, and my favorite books are romances, of course. I was just eleven when my mom and grandma introduced me to romance novels. I fell as in love as the heroes and heroines in the books I read. I love a good love story—a story of the kind of love that withstands time, that withstands life and death.

Damien Gray, a modern-day warrior, has that kind of love for his immortal bride, but theirs is no simple romance, because one of them is alive and the other is dead—murdered, perhaps at the hand of the man she loves.

I hope you enjoy the story of Damien and Olivia’s immortal love.

Happy reading!

Lisa Childs


For my parents, Jack and Mary Lou Childs,

whose amazing love story has spanned sixty years

of marriage. Thank you for your guidance,

love, support and inspiration. Happy Anniversary,

Mom and Dad!

Love,

Lisa




Contents


Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16




Prologue


Centuries ago…

Crouched on the boulder on the rocky shore, Gray Wolf’s image reflected back at him from the moonlit surface of the Lake of Tears. The stripe of white had widened in his black hair, but other than that, he didn’t look much older than he’d been before the lake had formed.

Remembering the ravine that water had filled, he winced as he felt again the rocks and branches tearing at his skin as he’d dropped into what his people had believed a bottomless abyss. Yet the rocks and branches had not inflicted the scar that shone faintly on his deeply tanned skin, on his chest, where an arrow had pierced his heart.

He had been dead long before the arrow had killed him, though. The same shaman who’d shot the bow had killed the mother of Gray Wolf’s son. But Gray Wolf hadn’t known, so he had blamed invaders from a far off land and himself until those invaders returned with the woman. Anya—with her hair like moonlight and her eyes like chips of a light blue sky.

The shaman had called her a sorceress, and although he hadn’t admitted it, he’d been fearful that she was more powerful than him. So the Wise One had ordered her death as necessary to protect the sacred land of Gray Wolf’s people. Only on their land grew the special herbs that could be used in potions that induced supernatural powers. Anxious to redeem himself for what he’d considered his failure to protect his people, Gray Wolf had accepted the mission to kill her.

Instead he had fallen in love with the flaxen haired, pale-skinned beauty. As her touch could bring slain warriors back to life, it had brought him back to life. Twice. First from his self-imposed death due to guilt and remorse and then from genuine death. She had filled the ravine with her tears, so his body had floated to the surface. She’d dragged him onto this very boulder on which he crouched and had brought him to life again.

And to love. He had never loved another like he loved his Anya. And he never would…

Water splashed as the surface of the lake broke. Arms, as pale as moonlight, glided like ripples through the water, bringing her to him. He gazed down into her light blue eyes, and his once-wounded heart clenched with love. “Anya…”

“My warrior…always protecting me,” she said with a wistful sigh.

Even impaled with the arrow, he had saved her from the shaman—throwing her crude dagger and killing the Wise One. Yet Gray could not help but feel the man’s spirit lurked, waiting to seek his revenge against Gray Wolf’s descendants. But Gray wasn’t the gifted one. Anya was, as was a female from every other generation of her family. They had no children together—just his son whom she treated like her own. Gray wished for his son, and all his descendants, to find a woman like Gray had, a sorceress, who could save him from the vengeance of the shaman and whose love would create their own Legend of the Lake of Tears.




Chapter 1


She fought her way from the murky depths of the lake, kicking against the skirt of her gown. The wet tatters of material wound around her legs like the tentacles of some monster of the deep, trapping her beneath the icy water. Help me! Help me!

She could only utter the words inside her head. Her voice, shaking with fear and desperation, echoed inside her mind. She blinked back the water and tears that blinded her. Faint light guided her toward the surface, yet she could not break free. But she could see the world beyond the lake. She could see him.

With the ripples in the water, his face wavered in and out of focus. He crouched atop a boulder on the rocky shore, the wind ruffling his hair, which was all black but for a thin streak of white in the lock falling across his forehead. He leaned out over the lake and tossed long-stemmed roses like stones across the water.

Frantically thrashing her arms and legs, she finally broke free to the surface. But no water splashed. She didn’t create so much as a ripple.

His shoulders hunched and head down, he didn’t even glance toward her. His face, with sharp cheekbones and deep-set eyes, reflected in the lake. But her face—none of her—reflected back from the water. Because she no longer existed. He had made certain of that.

“Are the flowers for me?” she asked him through the bitterness and anger choking her.

He lifted his head, as if listening. Then he pushed a slightly shaking hand through his hair, which was long, nearly brushing his broad shoulders. With a heavy sigh, he climbed down from the boulder and walked away, leaving the lake and her behind him.

“Damien!” she screamed. But the birds continued to chirp in the trees surrounding the lake, undisturbed by her cry. Because no one could hear her anymore.

But him? He turned back, glancing over his shoulder at the roses floating across the surface of the water. Did he see her…floating just above? Or did he see only the mist that rolled across the lake every evening as the sun dropped from the sky?

“Damien!” she screamed again, but he whirled away from her and headed up the steep hill to the Victorian house perched on the edge of it. The weathered clapboard and fieldstone facade of the house, with its turrets and gables, blended into the rocky slope—except for its widow’s walk, the ornate railing rising eerily above the roofline.

Propelled by anger, she found the strength to pull herself from the lake. She followed him but stopped before the boulder from which he had tossed the roses. A glint of metal drew her attention to a bronze plate affixed to the ancient rock. She reached through the thickening mist and, with a trembling, pale fingertip, traced the engraving in the memorial plate.

Olivia Ann Kingston-Gray, Rest in Peace.

But Olivia could find no peace in death or this limbo in which she existed where her body lay—at the bottom of the Lake of Tears for the past six months. And her restless spirit roamed the rocky shore of the lake, anger feeding off her grief and fear until rage consumed her.

She traced the last words of the inscription. Beloved Wife. Another pretty lie. He had told her so many times—making her trust him, making her fall for him. Olivia didn’t know at whom she was more angry—him for telling the lies or herself for being so gullible that she’d believed him. But now, too late, she knew better.

And she knew what she had to do. Olivia had returned from the dead for one reason. Revenge. Against the man who had killed her. Her husband.



Damien Gray stared down at the lake, which stretched out a half mile from the rocky shore in front of the house. Woods of ancient pines surrounded it. He studied the surface of the lake, watching it grow dark as the last trace of daylight faded into dusk.

Wisps of fog drifted across the gray surface like the roses he had strewn onto the water just a short time ago. He braced his palm against the cool, curved glass of the second-story, turret bedroom window and leaned forward, staring intently across the rocky shore to the lake. He narrowed his eyes, trying to peer through the thickening mist. Trying to see her.

Had she been there earlier, floating on the surface of the lake like the fog? Or had her faint image only been his mind—and his heart—playing tricks on him again? Hell, everywhere he looked he saw her now. Maybe she was only a figment of his imagination and his guilt.

Or she was actually haunting him…?

He blew out a ragged breath of bone-deep weariness and turned away from the window. Maybe if he could close his eyes and not see her, he wouldn’t see her when he was awake, either. He needed some damn sleep. Now. Before insomnia stole whatever was left of his sanity.

But when Damien turned toward the antique sleigh bed, the last thing he thought of was sleeping in it. He thought again—always—of her. And their honeymoon…

Olivia had giggled as Damien kicked open the door and carried her across the threshold into the master suite. “You’re really pushing this macho thing by carrying me up the stairs,” she teased. “You better put me down.”

Never. The thought flashed through his mind, and his arms tightened around his new bride.

“Trying to get away from me already?” he asked, keeping his tone light and teasing even though he worried that she was. That she might. Because it had happened before.

Her hand clenched on his shoulder, and she smiled up into his face, her pale blue eyes shining with love. Or so he’d thought at the time. “I’m right where I want to be,” she assured him.

“Good,” he said with satisfaction, “because you are not going anywhere.”

She lifted her chin and challenged him. “Oh, I’m not?”

“No, I forbid it.” And he wasn’t entirely joking.

She tilted her head. “Hmmm…as I recall the vows that we spoke today, we agreed to respect each other, but there was no mention of obeying.”

“Hmmm…” he mocked her, “I recall you definitely agreeing to obey. Have you forgotten so soon, Wife?”

“Nice try, Husband,” she mocked back. “But if you don’t let me go, I can’t give you your surprise….”

His gut tightened with apprehension. “Surprise?” He hated surprises. He’d had one too damn many.

Taking advantage of having distracted him, Olivia wiggled out of his arms. “Yes, I have a surprise for you.” She grabbed a small suitcase from the chest at the foot of the bed and carried it into the bathroom. “I’m glad the bags were brought up.”

“Nathan brought them up when we went down to the lake,” he said, glancing toward the curved turret windows that overlooked the rocky shore and the Lake of Tears. But he didn’t move toward the window; he could not move farther away from her.

“Nathan?” she asked through a crack in the bathroom door.

“My cousin and the caretaker of the house and lake,” he explained—as much as anyone could explain Nathan Gray.

“The shaman?” she asked.

Obviously she had spent enough time in town to hear about Nathan. Usually the residents of the village of Grayson, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, were reticent with and suspicious of strangers. But from the moment Olivia had come to town, she had been accepted as if she belonged. And she did—she belonged with him.

“Yes, Nathan is believed to be a shaman,” he said. But no matter what the townspeople, or Nathan, thought, Damien struggled to accept the legends and the beliefs of the past as anything more than fairy tales. He was too pragmatic and cynical to believe in the supernatural.

“I want to meet him,” she said.

Probably to question him about the lake, as she had persistently questioned Damien since they had first met. Her fascination with the legend of the Lake of Tears should have forewarned him…of the tragedy to come.

“I want to thank him,” Olivia explained, “for bringing up the bags.”

Then she stepped out of the bathroom and into the soft light of the crystal chandelier. And for a moment Damien stopped breathing, the air trapped in his lungs, as he stared at his bride. Even though she hadn’t worn a wedding dress for their civil ceremony, she had been beautiful in an ivory skirt and jacket, with her hair pinned up. Now she looked bridal—in a white silk-and-lace robe and gossamer gown with her platinum hair shimmering like moonlight around her shoulders.

“I want to thank him, too,” Damien said, his voice raspy as desire for his bride overwhelmed him.

Her fingers trembling, she plucked at the long, full skirt of the gown. “It’s not too much? I know we wanted to keep things simple.” Dark pink color flooded her pale skin. “And it’s not like we’ve never done it before….”

He reached out and pressed a finger across her lips. “Shhh…” He sought to settle her nerves even as ones of his own rushed up to squeeze his chest. “Tonight is our first time.”

Beneath his finger her lips curved into a smile of amusement. “Damien…”

“Tonight is our first time as man and wife.” He moved his finger back and forth across the silkiness of her full lips. “Tonight is the first time I sleep with my bride….”

“This bride,” she murmured, her eyes soft with vulnerability.

Since he’d met her, which had actually been a few short months ago, he had witnessed only her strength and confidence. He had never glimpsed her insecurity until that moment.

Did she have doubts or regrets about marrying him? “Olivia?”

“I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head so that her hair swirled around her shoulders. “I shouldn’t have mentioned her—”

But now that she had, the pressure that had weighed on Damien for years returned. He shoved a hand through his hair and said, “Maybe we shouldn’t have come here.”

“You didn’t want to,” she reminded him. “I talked you into it.”

And he should have followed his gut instinct and stayed away from the lake. Hell, maybe he should have sold the house and property. Unlike Nathan and Olivia, with their fascination with the past, Damien preferred to leave it behind and move on to the future. But he and Olivia had met here at the lake, and so he had allowed himself to be persuaded to return for their honeymoon.

Their honeymoon.

He was the one who needed to move on, to let the past go and focus on the future. His future with Olivia.

“I intend to give you everything you want, Olivia,” he promised.

She gazed up at him, her blue eyes soft, and insisted, “I only want you.”

He lifted his hand and ran his thumb over the gold band on his finger. “You have me.”

“I’m greedy,” she said, her lips lifting in a smile again, but one that was more wistful than amused. “I want all of you.”

He had worried that she would want more from him than he could give. But yet he had proposed. Maybe it was the gambler in him that had compelled him to risk his heart again. Or maybe it was her.

“You have all of me,” he assured her. “I’m here.”

Not at the chain of casinos that usually consumed all his time and energy but that had rewarded him for his hard work and dedication with more money than he would ever be able to spend.

“And I’m with you—only you.” Because of her, he was able to move on beyond the pain of his past.

He pushed his fingers into her soft hair, cupping her head and tipping up her face so she’d meet his gaze. “You are everything to me.”

Her breath shuddered out in a warm caress against his throat and chin. “I love you. I love you.”

Damien, as a gambler, was used to taking risks. But he didn’t like to drop his poker face and reveal his hand. Too many times the other person had proved to be bluffing. But this was Olivia, and even though he hadn’t known her long, he felt he knew her well, well enough to trust her. “And I love you….”

“Prove it to me,” she challenged, shrugging off the white silk robe to leave her creamy shoulders bare but for the narrow straps of the gown. Through the thin lace, he caught glimpses of her body—the swell of her breasts, the shadow of her navel and her rosy areolas. Under his intense stare, her nipples hardened and penetrated the flimsy material.

He groaned. “That’s some gown.”

“Negligee.”

“Whatever it is, I like it,” he said as he slid his finger under one of the straps. “But I’d like it even more off you.”

“You’re the one with too many clothes on,” she complained, reaching for his tie, unknotting and then sliding it free of his shirt. Next she attacked the buttons, undoing them to bare his chest to her soft hands and softer lips.

His heart pounded hard beneath her mouth. He tangled his fingers in the silken strands of her hair and tugged gently so that her face tipped up to his. Leaning forward, he pressed his mouth to hers. He nibbled first at her lips then deepened the kiss, sliding his tongue into the sweet warmth of her mouth, as he couldn’t wait to bury himself inside her body.

His blood was rushing through his veins as he slid his mouth from hers, over her delicate jaw to her neck. Her pulse pounded with a passion nearly as fierce as his. He moved his hands over the silk and lace covering her body, tracing the dip of her waist, the curve of her hips…

Then he cupped her breasts and rubbed his thumbs across the nipples protruding through the gown. When he replaced one thumb with his mouth, suckling through the lace and tugging gently with his teeth, Olivia moaned and tangled her fingers in his hair, pressing his head against her breasts. “Damien, please….”

He lifted his gaze to meet hers. The pale blue irises nearly swallowed by her enlarged pupils, she stared down at him. “Please,” she repeated, “give me everything….”

“Oh, I intend to,” he promised as he pushed the straps of the gown from her shoulders. The white lace slithered down her body, puddling at her feet, leaving her pale skin bare but for the flush of passion. He lifted her in his arms and carried her to the bed and vowed, “I’m going to give you everything, Wife, and not just tonight….”

But for the rest of their lives. He had intended to spend his life making her happy, not mourning her loss.

That night had marked the beginning of their marriage and was supposed to have been the beginning of their life together. But less than a week later, before the honeymoon had ended, Olivia was dead.

Rubbing a slightly shaking hand over his face, he stared out the window again. A storm had rolled in with his turbulent memories. Dark clouds hung over the fog-enshrouded lake while thunder rumbled in the distance. Then lightning broke the clouds, illuminating the sky, the lake, the rocky shore—and her.

Olivia, wearing that same silk-and-lace gown he’d taken off her on their wedding night, walked along the shore. The lightning caught in her hair, making the long blond strands as luminescent as moonlight.

He pounded his fist against the curved glass and screamed her name: “Olivia!”



Lightning flashed, cutting through the mist to illuminate the rocky shore and the house on the hill above it—and the man standing at the window of the bedroom in the second story of the turret. Thunder drowned out his voice, but from the way he moved his lips, she could tell he screamed her name.

She froze on the shore, unable to move, her gaze locked with his. Then the dark clouds dropped closer to the earth, blocking the house and him from her vision. But her tension did not ease; she was as restless as the weather. The crisp spring wind whipped around the lake, shaking the boughs of the ancient pines. Thunder boomed with such force that the rocks on the shore beneath her trembled, and above her, the windows of the house rattled.

Then lightning cracked again, illuminating the house. But no one stood at the upstairs window anymore. Because now he stood—just a couple of yards—in front of her, his handsome face stark with shock as the color drained from his usually dark skin. “Olivia…?”

He could see her.

This was what she’d wanted, she reminded herself, as panic choked her. She had wanted him to see her. She had needed him to see her to exact her revenge.

But when he lifted his arms and reached for her, the panic turned to fear. And she spun around, running along the shore.

“Olivia!”

The scrape of his shoes against the rocks warned her that he followed. And his ragged breath rising above the wind warned that he drew closer.

With dread she turned to the lake. Every time she went back in, she had to fight harder to reach the surface—to leave those icy depths. But while she’d wanted him to see her, she wasn’t ready yet. She wasn’t as strong as she needed to be to face him. She dove into the water, sinking fast as the lake, pulling at her gown and her hair, sucked her deep.

God, what had she done? Why had she run? It wasn’t as if he could kill her twice. She was already dead….

The water shifted around her, as another body fought against the power of the lake. But this one was alive, for now. Damien’s long legs and arms thrashed as he dove deep. Looking for her?

All these months of restless wandering, this was what she had wanted, for what she had waited. For him to see her. And for an opportunity for revenge. She would have no more perfect opportunity than now…than for him to experience the same fate she had.

Death.

Six months ago, on one night of their honeymoon, she had waited on the shore for him to return from checking in at the casino in Grayson. Wearing only her wedding-night negligee and moonlight, she had planned a special surprise for him. Anticipation had rushed through her as she’d heard the distinctive engine of his custom-made sports car pulling into the drive. But she hadn’t anticipated the attack moments later. She’d had only a momentary flash of foreboding before the blow—not enough warning to react. To save herself and…

She had been knocked over the head and dumped into the lake. The icy water had shocked her into consciousness, and she had fought hard against the hands holding her beneath the water. His hands. She had clawed and kicked, trying to free herself. But then the water had filled her lungs, and she had lost her strength and consciousness again. She’d sunk deep to the bottom of the lake that legend claimed was bottomless. Because no one had ever reached such depths…and lived.

And this time, neither would he…

She cut through the water until she found him. He had changed direction now, kicking toward the surface, unwilling to dive as deep as he had sent her, as he had consigned her for eternity. And she reached out, manacling her fingers around his ankle.

This was the revenge she had wanted, she reminded herself, as doubts assailed her. This was what he deserved for what he had done to her. An eye for an eye…

A life for a life…

But he hadn’t taken just one.



Lungs burning with oxygen deprivation, Damien fought his way toward the surface—toward air. But something caught his foot, wrapping around his ankle and pulling him down. Above him lightning flashed, illuminating the lake and those precious feet that separated him from the surface.

What the hell had he been thinking to leap into the Lake of Tears after an apparition? She couldn’t be real. God, he was losing his mind. And now maybe his life…

He kicked with one foot, the other still caught. Something cold, but which paradoxically heated his blood, wound tight around his ankle, trapping him beneath the water. Panic pressed against his chest, adding to the constriction from lack of oxygen. He had to stay calm if he intended to stay alive.

But hell, what was the point of fighting, of living, when he had nothing for which—for whom—to live?

But he was a Gray—a Gray Wolf, actually, before his ancestors had dropped their surname. And through history Grays had always been fierce warriors. Damien could not stop fighting because he didn’t know how; it was too much a part of his nature, the very essence of who and what he was.

Summoning the last of his energy, as unconsciousness threatened, his vision growing black, he turned in the water, diving down to see on what he was caught.

And he saw her. Pale—almost translucent—fingers wrapped around his ankle, trapping him under the water.

Why?

Her face lifted toward his, and their gazes met. Those pale blue eyes, which had once shone with love whenever she’d looked at him, were now hard and cold with hatred.

“Why?” he mouthed the word at her. And as he did, the last of his air left his lungs and his world went black, swallowing her ghostly image from his sight as the Lake of Tears swallowed his body.



The ancient ghost of an Indian shaman stood on the rocky slope, where he had died centuries ago, before a sorceress’s tears had filled the deep ravineand formed the lake. And he watched and waited, hoping that this time the Gray Wolf warrior would not rise from the depths of the abyss and live….




Chapter 2


Head pounding like the beat of an ancient war drum, Damien crept back to consciousness. His skin stung as the icy chill receded, chased away by the warmth of a blazing fire and a scratchy wool blanket. He knocked the blanket aside as he lifted his hand and pushed his shaking fingers through his still-damp hair.

“It was real,” he murmured, his throat raspy with shock and cold.

“It was stupid,” a deep voice grumbled as a man kicked shut the door of the small cabin and dropped chunks of wood onto the floor near the mammoth stone fireplace. “What the hell, man? What were you thinking?”

“Nathan…” Damien recognized the rough-hewn pine boards of the ceiling and the log walls of his cousin’s cabin. The structure in the woods was even older than the house sitting on the rocky edge of the Lake of Tears. “You pulled me out?”

“Again,” Nathan said.

He had been there last time—six months ago. He had dragged Damien, kicking and swinging, from the water and convinced him it was pointless to search for Olivia. He hadn’t even known for certain that she’d drowned.

But Damien had found her robe and her shoes on the rocky shore. And he had guessed where she’d been.

And tonight, he knew for certain. She hadn’t run off as Nathan had tried to convince him she had.

She was dead.

“You were there,” Damien said as he pushed himself up, bracing his elbow on the arm of the couch on which he lay. “Again…”

“Lucky for you,” Nathan said.

For a man who made his living gambling, Damien was actually remarkably unfortunate—in love. “Yeah, lucky for me…”

His cousin turned to him, his dark gaze penetrating. “Were you trying…to kill yourself?”

“God, no.” But Olivia had tried to kill him. Why? Had she only grown to hate him that much after her death, or had she hated him before? Had her love been a lie?

“Then what the hell were you doing out there, in the lake,” Nathan demanded to know with anger and concern, “in the middle of a storm?”

Head still pounding, Damien winced at the volume of his cousin’s voice, and the memory of what had compelled him to risk the storm and the icy water of the Lake of Tears.

Her…

Not willing yet to share what—who—he had seen, he asked instead, “What were you doing out in the storm?”

“My job. I’m the caretaker here,” Nathan reminded him. “Your caretaker.”

Damien suspected his cousin didn’t refer to the fact that Nathan worked for him but that he was worried about him, about how he’d been living, actually barely living, since Olivia had disappeared nearly six months ago.

“If you weren’t trying to kill yourself,” Nathan persisted, “what the hell were you doing? You know the lake is bottomless. Some of our ancestors believed it to be the portal to the other world.”

“Hell,” Damien uttered the word as more than a curse, as a destiny. He should have known better than to think he could ever find happiness. “Hell is where this place always sends me. I never should have brought her here—not after—”

“She wanted to come. You told me that,” Nathan remembered. The man never forgot anything, nothing from his lifetime or from the lifetimes of the ancestors who had lived before him and Damien. “You said she wanted to spend your honeymoon here in the house on the lake.”

And like a damn fool Damien had wanted to give her everything she wanted. “I should have told her no.”

“But it was where you met….”



The first time he’d seen her had been on the rocky shore of the Lake of Tears. For years he had hated coming to the Victorian house on the lake, and he had only visited when absolutely necessary to meet with Nathan. If not for his cousin, he would have sold the estate long ago. But Nathan had convinced him it was Damien’s legacy and that he was honor bound by their people to care for the lake and the property.

Damien had been cutting around the lake, heading to the woods and Nathan’s cabin, when he’d come upon her standing on the rocky shore. Even then he hadn’t believed that she was real; she was far too beautiful to be simply human.

The summer wind played with her hair, whipping platinum-blond locks across her face and around her shoulders. She wore a linen vest, sleeveless and low cut that revealed the shadow between her breasts, and pants in the same pale blue of her eyes. The wind molded the linen to her curves, revealing more than it covered.

“You are the most beautiful trespasser I’ve ever had,” Damien remarked with an appreciative whistle, drawing her from her contemplation of the lake.

Startled, she jumped and then turned toward him. And her eyes widened with surprise and something close to recognition, as if she knew him even though they had never met before.

The same sense of recognition jarred him. She looked like a legend, the spitting image of the woman whose story had been passed from generation to generation in his family. She looked like the woman whose tears over her murdered lover had created the lake. And whose supernatural ability to resurrect the dead had brought the Indian warrior—whose mission had been to kill her—back to life. A life they had shared on the rocky shore of the Lake of Tears.

“I’m not trespassing,” she insisted, her chin lifting with pride and indignation.

Because the land had been hers first?

He shook his head, shaking off the fanciful thought he blamed on his cousin’s fascination with the past. If not for his having to visit Nathan, Damien would not have even thought of the legend. But he wouldn’t have met this woman, either. And, as a shiver of foreboding lifted the hair on the nape of his neck, he considered that not meeting her might have been a good thing. With a flash of prophecy to which he would never admit, he sensed that his life was about to change…because of her.

“Then what the hell are you doing on my property?” he asked, growling the question as he did when he wanted to intimidate someone.

She didn’t lower her chin. She only narrowed her eyes and met his hard stare, unintimidated. “I’m checking out the wedding package.”

“Wedding package?” He repeated her ridiculous excuse, almost disappointed that she hadn’t come up with something more plausible.

“Yes, wedding package,” she insisted. “The ad described it as a wedding ceremony on the shore of the beautiful Lake of Tears, performed by a real Indian shaman. And the reception in the dining room of the house.” She gestured toward the Victorian on the hill. “And a honeymoon in the bridal suite in the second story of the turret.”

Damien’s breath caught with a stabbing pain in his chest. Damn, now he knew why Nathan had insisted on a meeting. He’d hatched another of his hairbrained schemes. But this one…

How could his cousin have ever considered opening up the lake and the house to the public a good idea? How could he think Damien would go along with such a thing…? How would reducing their heritage to a reception hall honor their legacy, their people?

“Are you all right?” she asked.

Her question surprised him. In all of his thirty-six years, he had never met anyone, besides his cousin, who had been able to read his moods. Not even his wife, despite all the years they’d known each other, had ever really understood him.

“I’m fine,” he said, “just trying to figure out if you’re lying….”

Or if all the years of Nathan drinking the potions he concocted from the plants and flowers growing wild on the land had finally reduced him to madness…

Again the indignation flashed in her light-blue eyes. “I am not lying.”

“But why would you be checking out wedding packages—” he was going to kill Nathan; all the shaman’s herbs and roots and potions were not going to save him from Damien’s rage “—when you’re not wearing a ring?” He stepped close, caught her hand in his and held up her bare fingers.

God, her skin was silky…

“I gave the engagement ring back to my fiancé—my ex-fiancé.” She expelled a ragged breath and lifted her gaze to Damien’s. “But now…I don’t know….”

At the thought of her wearing another man’s ring, Damien tensed and tightened his grasp on her hand. “But you had some doubts….”

She nodded. “I’m not sure they were really my doubts, though, or…”

“If you had any doubts, you did the right thing,” he assured her, “by returning his ring.”

He’d had doubts, and now he wished like hell he hadn’t ignored them. But Melanie had fallen for him when he’d been a poor Indian kid on a college scholarship with nothing else to his name. And then she’d stuck by him through all those long, empty days and nights while he had been working to establish his career. Guilt gripped him, as it always did, when he acknowledged that he hadn’t been there for her when she had needed him most.

The blond-haired woman tugged at her hand, trying to free it from his. But instead of releasing her, he entwined their fingers. “So since you don’t intend to use the wedding package, you’re here under false pretences,” he pointed out. “You are trespassing.”

“What are you going to do?” she asked, her voice soft with challenge. “Call the sheriff?”

Even if the nearby village of Grayson had an active sheriff, calling him wouldn’t have been Damien’s first inclination. His first inclination of how to handle his beautiful trespasser had his blood pumping faster through his veins…in anticipation.

He shook his head. “Nope. My land. My law.”

“Hmmm…” she mused, pursing her full lips, “I don’t remember that law being on the bar exam.”

“Did you pass?” he asked, his tone doubtful even though he believed she would not have brought up the exam if she hadn’t passed.

Her chin rose a little higher with pride and a touch of arrogance that intrigued him as much as her beauty did. “First time.”

“So you’re smart and beautiful,” he concluded.

“Brilliant,” she bragged with a self-deprecating grin that mocked her own ego.

“And modest,” he teased.

She shrugged those sexy bare shoulders. “I don’t have time for modesty.”

“In that case maybe you decided to trespass in order to skinny-dip in the lake. So don’t let me stop you.” He released her hand but reached for the buttons on her vest.

She grabbed his wrists, her breath coming fast through her parted lips. “Don’t! Don’t—”

“Oh, would you rather I go first?” He stepped back and pulled his shirt over his head, dropping the black cashmere onto the rocky shore.

Her eyes wide, she stared at his chest. “I—I—uh…” she stammered then slid the tip of her pink tongue across her bottom lip.

“I hope you’re more eloquent than that in court.” He reached for his belt.

“Don’t!” she yelled again. “Don’t take off anything else. I’m not here to skinny-dip.”

“Or for a wedding,” he reminded her. Because the Lake of Tears would become a wedding spot only over his dead body.

“I’m here because I’m curious about the lake,” she admitted. But she didn’t so much as glance at the water, her attention still focused on his bare chest.

“So let me satisfy your curiosity.” He stepped closer and she jerked her gaze to his face.

“A-about the lake,” she stammered.

“Of course. About the lake,” he agreed, unable to keep a grin from his mouth. “What do you want to know?”

“You don’t want to put your shirt back on?” she asked, her voice soft and wistful.

He shook his head. “It’s hot.”

“No, it’s not,” she protested, shivering in the light summer breeze.

“You’re from the Lower Peninsula,” he surmised. “Downstate.”

“Detroit.”

He would have guessed. She had an urban air about her—one of glamour and sophistication. All the things he had fought so hard to become she had probably been born.

“I’m thinking about moving up here, though,” she shared, her gaze watchful as if she cared what he thought.

“To get away from the ex?” he asked, wondering about her broken engagement.

“To be here.” She gestured toward the lake. “Somehow I think I belong here. I know that probably sounds crazy….”

What was crazy was the way she made him feel—as if she belonged with him.

“I don’t even know your name,” he realized.

“Olivia Kingston.” She held out her hand.

Instead of shaking, he lifted it to his mouth and brushed his lips across her knuckles. She shivered again.

“And you are?” she asked.

“Your destiny,” he answered her.

She smiled. “Apparently I’m not the only one who doesn’t have time for modesty.”

He didn’t have time for a lot of things—actually for anything or anyone outside the casinos he ran throughout Michigan. But yet something about her compelled him to make time…for her. “I’m Damien Gray.”

She laughed. “Of course you are. No wonder you don’t have time for modesty.” Her laughter evaporated like water on the hot rocks. “And you don’t have time for my questions, either. I’m sorry to have bothered you….”

She stepped forward as if she intended to move around him and head up the hill to the house and the street beyond it. But he caught her, wrapping his hand around her bare arm. Goose bumps rose on her skin beneath his palm.

“You have bothered me,” he admitted, resenting how she had opened up his world to possibilities again. “But you’re going to bother me more if you leave now.” Because then he would never know what might have become of those possibilities.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for me stay,” she said, and for the first time fear flickered in her eyes.

“Why?” he asked, lowering his voice. “Afraid I might talk you into skinny-dipping?”

Her gaze slid over his bare chest again, and with a heavy sigh, she confessed, “I’m afraid you might talk me into all kinds of things.”

Later, after he’d told her Gray Wolf and Anya’s legend of the Lake of Tears, he had talked her into skinny-dipping.

Playing naked in the water with her that day had been a far cry from tonight—when she had tried to kill him.

“Hey!” Nathan shouted, snapping his fingers in Damien’s face. “Are you all right?”

Pushing back his memories, Damien focused on his cousin and nodded. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine…”

Nathan studied him, clearly unconvinced. “I thought I lost you again.”

“No, I’m here,” Damien assured him. “Thanks to you.” His breath shuddered out in a ragged sigh. “Thanks for pulling me out.”

During the summers they had spent at the Lake of Tears, staying with their grandfather in the old Victorian, which had been pretty dilapidated then, he and Nathan had grown as close as brothers. Nathan had always been there for him, even after Damien, as the oldest grandson, had inherited the house and the lake when their grandfather passed. Nathan had loved and understood the land and the legend more than Damien ever would. But maybe that was why he didn’t care that he didn’t own the estate; his job as caretaker was more important.

“So what the hell happened tonight?” Nathan asked, dropping onto the wooden crate that served as his coffee table. “Tell me what’s going on with you.”

Damien grimaced at the persistent pounding inside his head. Stalling, he pushed a hand through his hair again. “I wish to hell I knew.”

“Well, what brought you out of the house during the storm?” Nathan asked, speaking softly and slowly as if he feared his cousin had lost his mind.

Damien drew in a deep breath. God, it was bad enough he thought he was crazy, but to share what had happened with anyone else…

But then no one else would understand like Nathan, who claimed to be able to see a ghost himself, of a long-dead shaman who served as his spirit guide, advising him in using the plants and flowers that grew wild on the land. Only on this land.

“I’ve been seeing her,” he admitted.

“Who?” Nathan asked, his brows arched. “You’re dating someone?”

The thought of seeing someone besides Olivia struck Damien like a spear through the heart. He couldn’t betray her. But tonight, tugging him under, she had done more than betray him.

“I’ve been seeing Olivia….”

Nathan stilled, his body tense. “She’s come back to the Lake of Tears?”

Damien shook his head. “No, she never left.”

“Then I don’t understand…. If you’re so convinced she’s dead, how could you…” He trailed off, his mouth dropping open in surprise. “You think you’ve seen her ghost?”

Damien released a ragged breath. “I wasn’t sure. Over the past six months, I’ve been catching glimpses of something down by the lake.” A wisp of smoke when the sky was clear. An orb of sunlight when the sky was dark. But tonight she had taken shape, the same gorgeous shape she’d had when she lived. “Of someone…”

“So now you’re sure?” Nathan asked, his voice guarded as if he was still unconvinced.

But Damien had no doubts. “Yes.”

His cousin’s brow furrowed. “I don’t understand. Why would she come back?”

The pounding in Damien’s head repeated in his heart, which ached as he recalled the look in her eyes as she had trapped him underwater—that look of utter hatred. “To kill me.”

Shock widened Nathan’s eyes. “What?”

“She tried to kill me tonight.”

“In the lake?” His cousin shook his head. “Damien, that doesn’t make sense. A spirit can’t touch you, can’t hurt you…”

“I felt her.” He swallowed hard. His skin tingled yet from where she had clutched his ankle. “I felt her fingers around my ankle. I felt her. She wasn’t real—she wasn’t human—but she was. You know what I mean?”

His expression guarded, Nathan replied, “I know you’ve been under a lot of stress since she disappeared.”

“You think I’m going crazy?”

His cousin’s gaze dropped away from his. “I know you were crazy in love with Olivia, even more than you ever loved Melanie.”

Catching the censure in Nathan’s tone, Damien struggled to explain. “Melanie was my friend. She was faithful. She stuck by me.”

“You talk about her like she was a dog,” Nathan remarked, his voice sharp with resentment. With all the time Melanie had spent alone at the lake while Damien worked, she had grown close to his cousin.

“She’d been a part of my life for so long,” Damien said. “She was important to me.”

“Not as important as Olivia.”

“Olivia was my fate.” Maybe he shouldn’t have fought tonight. Maybe he should have succumbed to his fate. “She was my destiny.” And he should have told her that while she was alive; he should have opened up his heart to her and truly gave her the everything he had promised her on their wedding night. “Surely you can understand that, Nathan.”

“I understand that you need to get away from here,” the shaman counseled him, as he counseled so many of the townspeople.

But the difference was that the townspeople believed. Even after tonight, after seeing a ghost himself, Damien struggled to accept otherworldly powers or abilities.

Nathan stood up and returned to the fire, staring into the flames. “You need to get back to work.”

“I go to work.”

“What? A few times a week? Your job used to consume your life. You need to let it consume you again,” Nathan advised, “before she does.”

Damien didn’t bother telling his cousin that it was already too late. If Nathan were really a shaman, he knew.

Olivia consumed him. Thoughts of her haunted him day and night. And now her ghost haunted him.

“Can’t you help me?” Damien asked. “This—spirits—that’s your thing, your area of expertise.”

Nathan chuckled. “So you believe me now? You must be desperate.”

“I am,” Damien admitted, knowing he deserved his cousin’s derision. He had treated him to more than enough of his disbelief over the years, when he’d been unable to accept that Nathan had any special abilities. But Nathan had never been offended, not even when Damien had raged at him over his plans to perform weddings on the shore of the Lake of Tears—where Nathan had married him and Melanie and where she had died years later on the rocky hill above the lake. Damien had been furious, and Nathan had apologized, respecting Damien’s wishes to keep the tragedy private.

Nathan had always understood and, Damien suspected, pitied him for not being able to believe in the magic of the land the young shaman considered sacred and of the special abilities of their people—of him.

“Can’t you help me?” he implored his cousin.

Nathan shook his head. “I wish there was some drink I could make you. Some talisman I could give you. But even I can’t find a cure for a broken heart, man.”

“You think that’s what’s going on with me? You don’t think I really saw her tonight?”

His cousin shrugged. “I don’t know, Damien. You’ve never seen anything before, and this land is alive with the energy of the spirits of all our ancestors who passed. Why would you see only her?”

“Because I love her.” Even now, even after what she’d done tonight.

Nathan nodded. “And because of that, you don’t want to let her go.”

“I can’t.”

“And that’s probably why, if you really saw her ghost, that she’s still here,” the shaman explained. “Because you won’t let her go. You’re holding her back from crossing over.”

Could that be why she hated him now?

“How do I let her go?”

Nathan shrugged again. “You need time, but more importantly, you need distance. You hardly came around here after Melanie died. And that helped you get over her.”

Olivia, and really falling in love for the first time, had helped him get over the senseless death of his first wife. “I won’t get over Olivia.”

“Not if you don’t try,” Nathan agreed. “You need to get the hell out of here.”

Damien shook his head. He couldn’t leave her…even if she hated him.




Chapter 3


The Wise One stood on the rocky bluff where he had died centuries ago, before the lake had formed from the sorceress’s tears. Like then, when a dagger had pierced his heart, he felt his power slipping away. Once again a Gray Wolf warrior threatened to disrupt his plan—over a woman.

She was dead. Did she not know it? She wandered the lake and the land as if unaware she had been killed. And she remained unaware of his presence, as if she were more real than him, as if she were more human than ghost.

Or was she, like the long-dead woman she eerily resembled, a sorceress? Fear flickered through him like a flame, but he snuffed out the fire with reason. If she were a sorceress, she would have been able to save herself or to bring herself back as a flesh-and-blood woman rather than a ghost.

No, this woman had no more power than any other mere mortal. The only way the Wise One suspected she was like him was that she had some unfinished business trapping her in this world. And perhaps he could use that, and use her as he had used others, to help him—at long last—complete his mission.



Maybe she could have passed through the walls. But since she wasn’t certain of the limitations of being a ghost, Olivia opened the front door. She stared down at her hand on the knob, surprised she had enough strength to turn it. Until last night, when Damien had finally seen her by the lake, she hadn’t been strong enough or substantial enough to even create a ripple across the surface of the water. Until she had grabbed his ankle, touching him, she hadn’t had enough strength to hold on to or move anything. But now she was strong—strong enough to do what she needed to do.

She stepped inside the house, wincing as the mahogany door closed behind her and the click of the lock echoed in the two-story foyer. As moved by the beauty of the house as she had been the first time she’d seen it, Olivia stared in awe at the chandelier hanging above her. Light caught in the crystal prisms and bounced off the gleaming marble floor in myriad colors.

How could a man responsible for such beauty be capable of so much ugliness? She had seen the “before” pictures and had lived in the “after.” She knew the money and time Damien had spent restoring the house after it had fallen into a state of disrepair when his grandfather had owned it.

Another man might have torn down the home that had succumbed to the harsh elements of the Upper Peninsula. Tearing down and building new would have been cheaper and easier. But Damien never did what was easy.

And killing him wouldn’t be easy, either. She should have known he would fight. Yet, had he broken free of her hold, or had she let him go last night?

Guilt tempered her anger as she recalled the look in his eyes—the utter shock and…

Devastation?

Had she hurt him? She would not have considered it possible to hurt a man as tough and independent as Damien Gray. But then what did she really know about the man she had married in such a hurry?

That he was incredibly charismatic. She had never been as immediately drawn to another human being. Even now embarrassment filled her that she had made love with him the first day they’d met. She had dated her ex-fiancé for months before finally, after much deliberation, deciding to take their relationship to the next level.

With Damien, she had never deliberated. She had never thought at all. Until now. When it was too late. Anger rushed through her, energizing her. But this time she was mad at herself as she silently admitted to letting him go last night. She had released him—unable to kill him. Her anger turned to disgust. For six months she had plotted her revenge—and not just for herself.

She glided her palm over her stomach. Her whole body was empty now—with no substance, like her. She had been so weak to let him go just because of how he’d looked at her. And how he’d made her feel…

When Olivia had worked in the prosecutor’s office in Detroit, she had never understood those women who refused to testify against the husbands or boyfriends who had abused them and then returned to these men when they were released from jail. Was she one of those women—so obsessed with Damien that she would go back to him if she were able?

If she were alive…

No. She was smarter than that—stronger than that. She had only changed her mind about killing him because she needed more proof of his guilt first.

She had only heard his car that night, coming up the drive. She hadn’t heard him creep up behind her moments later. But only Damien moved that silently, as silently as whoever had struck her over the head as she waited for her new husband beside the lake. She’d had only a brief flash of dread, goose bumps lifting her skin, which she’d attributed to the chill air, before she’d been struck. And when she was in the water, sinking to the icy depths, she’d felt him. His presence was unmistakable.

He had been there—close. Yet she hadn’t actually seen him. Even if she could testify against him, her testimony would not be enough to convict him. Not without more evidence.

Hope filled her that she would find the evidence she needed and not Damien in the house. She didn’t want to see him again until she knew for certain if she’d been wrong about him when they had met and she’d fallen so fast for him, or if she was wrong about him now thinking him a killer.

She passed through the foyer, with its rich, champagne-hued brocade wallpaper, and headed up the curved staircase, with the hand-carved mahogany banister, to the second story. Sunlight poured through the stained-glass window onto the landing, casting a rainbow of color across the polished mahogany steps. Nerves added to her restlessness as she left the staircase and headed down the wide center hall. Her steps slowed on the gleaming hardwood as she neared the master suite. She reached out to push open the door, her fingers curling into her palm, forming a fist.

But the room was empty. So Olivia had only to fight the emotions flooding her like the sunshine flooding the room through the curved turret windows. This room was papered, too, in a mint-green paisley pattern that complemented the dark hardwood floor and moldings.

She closed her mind to the memories threatening to overwhelm her and crossed the threshold. Ignoring the sleigh bed, she crossed to the antique dresser in the same deep mahogany and opened drawers. She found her clothes folded exactly as she had put them away. Damien hadn’t packed them up or thrown them out. He had left all her belongings—as if he’d expected her to come back.

But if he had killed her, how could he have considered that possible? If he had killed her, he would have to know she could only return as a ghost. She tamped down her faint hope in his innocence, unwilling to draw any more conclusions based on emotion instead of evidence.

Then, despite the clear day, the windows rattled. Not from the force of the wind but from the power of the vehicle roaring up the driveway, with the same distinctive engine Olivia had heard that fateful night.

Damien had had the sports car custom designed. She knew no other vehicle, especially in the rural area of Grayson, that sounded the least bit similar. Only his vehicle sounded like the dangerous snarl of a wolf as it leaped to attack.

Like he had attacked her that night?

Did she need more evidence to convict him in her mind? She hadn’t thought so, but then she remembered his face in the water—the shock, the pain of what he must have considered her betrayal….

If not for that look, she would have tried again for her revenge. Did she have enough strength to cut his brake line, so when he drove, as he always did, too fast around the hairpin turns to the lake, he would lose control? But Damien Gray rarely lost control.

The front door slammed and his feet pounded on the stairs, heading up to the bedroom. And her. She could have rushed out and pushed him down the stairs. But he was so fit, so muscular, that he would probably survive the fall.

Could she kill him—even if she found the evidence that proved, beyond a doubt, his guilt? Was it possible to kill a man as powerful as Damien Gray?

His footsteps grew louder and closer.

She gasped, realizing she had frozen again, like she had on the shore the night before. And like then, she panicked again. Without the lake to leap into, she could only scramble for a place to hide, ducking into the luxurious bathroom and then the walk-in closet off the master bath.

Before she could draw the door closed, he stepped into the bathroom, his shoes scraping against the marble-tile floor. She couldn’t close the door without him noticing, so she moved back into a rack of clothes, hiding behind an assortment of dresses she’d brought to the house. She had packed more things than she’d needed for just their honeymoon, but she’d wanted to talk Damien into moving permanently to the house on the Lake of Tears. To her it had always felt more like home than the townhouse he owned in the condo development adjacent to the casino in Grayson.

Yet, despite promising to give her everything she wanted, Damien had refused to move to the Victorian, and had even seemed uneasy staying in the house the short time they had before she died. But now, after she was gone, he had remained. Alone.

Or he had been alone before her return from the dead? Through the dresses, she caught his reflection in the mirror on the open door of the closet. And a sensation, very much like a quickening of her blood, raced through her. While her body was gone, she still had the feelings—all the feelings—she’d had before her death.

Even for him…

He was so damn handsome. Dressed as he was in a suit and tie, he must have been at the casino. His hand jerked at the silver tie, pulling it free of the collar of the shirt in nearly the same shade of silver. The silk fabric shimmered, molding to his chest as he cast off his suit jacket, dropping it into a wicker basket for dry-cleaning.

Then his fingers undid the buttons of the shirt, and he tugged the silk free of his pants and cast off that garment, too, leaving his chest bare. Sunlight poured through an octagon window and painted gold the sculpted muscles of his smooth chest.

His hand went to his belt now, pulling it free of his black dress pants. He draped the belt across the corner of the marble vanity, then dropped his wallet and cell phone beside it before unzipping his pants. He pushed down his briefs along with his pants, his hands skimming down the sides of his lean hips.

Olivia closed her eyes on the image of his dimpled backside reflecting back from the mirror. But she couldn’t keep them closed; she had to be aware of where he was, if he was about to discover her hiding in the closet.

But he hadn’t moved toward the door. Instead, water sputtered and then ran as he turned on the faucet in the shower. Muscles rippled in his back and arms as he leaned out of the glass enclosure and lifted his hand to the thick, black hair bound at the base of his neck. He pulled free the leather thong holding it, and the hair skimmed his broad shoulders.

Despite her anger and resentment, desire pulsed through Olivia—warming and energizing her. Making her stronger and more substantial. How could she still want him? Had she lost her mind along with her life?

He stepped inside the shower, but the glass enclosure did not conceal his body; it only framed the masculine perfection that was Damien Gray. Water sluiced over his smooth, dark skin and rippling muscles. Olivia’s gaze followed drops of water from his sharp cheekbones, over the line of his strong jaw, down the impressive muscles of his chest, over the ripple of his washboard abs to where it caught in the dark hair around his manhood. Even though his penis wasn’t hard, it was still impressive—hanging heavy against his lean thighs.

Olivia closed her eyes again, trying to shut out the image…and the memories that pummeled her—of all those mornings and evenings she had joined him in that shower, soaping up every sexy inch of his body. She’d never been able to keep her gaze or her hands off him. He was so beautiful. She hadn’t believed he’d really been hers. And in the end, he hadn’t been—not if he’d been the one who had killed her.

But she forgot that as she watched him run soap over his skin. She flashed back to those times she had stepped inside the shower with him. To when she’d pressed a kiss between his shoulder blades, running her lips down the length of his sexy spine.

He would whirl around, catching her close—pulling her tight into his arms so that his chest crushed her breasts. And he cupped her face in his hands, tipping it up so that his mouth could devour hers. His lips pressed hers apart, so his tongue could slide inside, tasting and teasing her. Then, with his wet skin sliding against hers, he lifted her, making love to her against the glass, which steamed up not from the moisture of the shower but from the heat of their unquenchable passion.

Even now, knowing what he had undoubtedly done to her, she wanted him. How could she be so weak?

As the shower shut off, she tensed. But yet she couldn’t look away from the reflection in the mirror as he stepped out, droplets of water trailing down his body. He reached for a towel, sliding the soft, white terry cloth over every inch of his dark skin.

Energy charged throughout Olivia with her desire. She glanced down at herself, surprised to find her image so substantial—nearly as real as his.

Dropping the towel into a hamper, he sauntered naked into the walk-in closet. As he reached for jeans and a shirt, he stood so close that Olivia noticed when goose bumps rose on the smooth skin of his broad back, along the spine she had once kissed so tenderly. And he whirled around, turning toward her.

She stilled, cowering behind the long dresses. And she hated herself for cowering, and she hated him for making her cower. But it was like last night—on the shore—she wasn’t ready to see him. She needed proof first.

“Olivia? Olivia, are you here?” Damien asked in his deep, soft voice.

Even though she had no real breath to hold, Olivia held it—willing herself invisible to him now, when for six months she had been desperate for him to see her image.

Damien pushed a slightly shaking hand through his wet hair. “God, you’re losing it, man,” he murmured to himself. “Nathan’s right—you need to get out of here.”

No! Olivia held in the shout—barely—but it echoed in her mind. He couldn’t leave yet, not until she found the evidence that proved his guilt or innocence. If he left, she would never have justice. She would be forever trapped in the Lake of Tears.

Like she was trapped right now in the closet with him. But he dressed quickly, pulling on jeans and dragging a dark T-shirt over his head. The cotton clung to his damp skin, molded to his chest. Naked or clothed, the man affected her like no other man ever had.

Had her attraction to him blinded her to his faults, to the dangerous side of him that others had warned her about?

With one last glance around the closet, he walked out the door. Moments later she heard his footfalls on the mahogany treads of the staircase. And again a door opened and closed.

If she’d had breath, Olivia would have released it. Her tension eased with relief that he was gone. She stepped out from behind her dresses and moved back into the bathroom. Peering out the octagonal window, she glimpsed him below, walking down the rocky hill toward the lake. Sunlight gleamed in his dark hair, the wind ruffling and drying the long mane that hung loose around his shoulders.

She pulled her gaze from him, resolving that he would not distract her again. But then she noticed his clothes spilling out of the basket. And she lifted his shirt.

Had he been at the casino—where the female employees fawned over him and the female customers drooled? When Olivia had started working there, she had been warned that he was a womanizer, that after his wife’s tragic death, he had no relationships—only one-night stands. She had disregarded the warnings, writing them off as the jealousy of her fellow workers.

But now she wondered. Had he gotten rid of Olivia because he had changed his mind about being tied to one woman?

Freedom was his likeliest motive for murder. Olivia had owed more money than she had, and he had taken out no life insurance on her. So he couldn’t have murdered her for financial gain. But maybe he had done it to avoid financial loss. They had married in such haste that he had never asked her to sign a prenup, as a man with his substantial wealth should have done. But maybe he hadn’t considered one necessary, as he preferred murder to divorce.

And freedom to marriage?

She brought his shirt to her face and inhaled deeply. But no feminine perfume emanated from the silk. Only his musky aftershave clung to the material. But that didn’t really prove anything—that didn’t mean he wasn’t seeing other women.

But when? Over the past six months, she’d noted that he rarely left the house. So she had to make the most of this opportunity before he interrupted her again. She dropped the shirt and turned away from the window.

And she resumed her search for evidence of his guilt. Upstairs she rummaged through closets and dresser drawers. She even checked the attic, glancing inside boxes—hoping to find some evidence of not just her murder but Melanie’s, too.

If he had killed his second wife, he had probably killed his first wife. As with the warnings about his womanizing, Olivia had been warned that he was a killer, as well. But she had been too in love, or too infatuated, to listen to any of the warnings.

And she had believed Damien when he’d claimed that Melanie had killed herself. Was that what he had told people about Olivia—that she had taken her own life? Anger surged through her, strengthening her energy and her resolve as she continued her search.

Downstairs she checked cupboards and desk drawers. She did not exactly know what she was looking for, but yet she realized she had found it when she pulled a search warrant from atop the pile of papers on the desk in Damien’s mahogany-paneled den. The round room was in the turret beneath the master bedroom—its curved windows framing the lake and the man who stood on the shore of it, gazing out over the water.

Olivia pulled her gaze from him to focus on the warrant, which encompassed the house, grounds and lake. So the police had searched for her body, but she’d sunk too deep. Even if they had dredged, they wouldn’t have found her.

Had they found anything else for which they’d searched—any evidence of a homicide? Her homicide? Or Melanie’s?

Apparently she was not the only one who suspected Damien of killing her. But if the police had found the evidence they needed, he would not be a free man right now.

Of course he was too smart to leave any evidence. He was too smart to get caught.

But maybe he had left a witness—one more reliable and able to testify than she was. Ignoring a pang of loss and regret, she left the house and, avoiding the lake beneath which her body lay and where Damien stood vigil, she slipped deep into the woods.

And she hoped he wasn’t the only one who could see her….




Chapter 4


Moving with inherit stealth, Damien crept through the woods—his attention on the trail ahead and the woman who followed it, on her way from the house. He had thought he’d sensed her presence inside—while he’d been taking his shower.

He had felt her gaze on him, watching him as he had often caught her watching him—her blue eyes bright with desire. And he would open the door of the shower and pull her inside with him, her squealing as the water saturated the clothes she wore. But he’d help her, quickly, out of the wet garments. Baring all her pale skin to the pulse of the water and the caress of his hands…and his mouth…

He was always thorough, missing no delectable inch of her, licking the water from her breasts, running his tongue in circles around her pouting nipples before closing his lips around one.

She would moan and tangle her fingers in his hair while he moved his fingers lower, between her thighs, through her curls to her very core.

“Damien!” He could hear her yet, screaming his name as she came.

But he never allowed her time to catch her breath before he lifted her, thrusting inside her wet heat. Her legs locked tight around his waist, she would arch her hips—in perfect rhythm with his thrusts—until they both screamed in passionate release.

He expelled a ragged breath. God, it had been too long since he’d had that release. With Olivia gone he’d had no desire to make love because he had no one to love with her gone.

But was she really gone?

He focused on the woman ahead of him on the trail. Her hair the color of moonlight, she had to be Olivia, but yet she looked more substantial, more real, than the woman from the lake the night before.

Was his bride alive and only trying to drive him out of his mind? His gut tightened with dread as he realized he should have known better than to take the risk of trusting her. He was a gambler—not a fool.





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