Tami Hoag - Heart of Gold

Moving to Anastasia and buying Keepsake had been a lifelong dream, but deep inside her Faith had nurtured another dream as well-to someday find a man to whom she could give the wealth of love she had stored up inside her, a man who would need her love and cherish her love and love her in return. She knew Shane was that man.

But what if she couldn’t change his mind?

The possibility he might reject her sent little jets of fear shooting along under the surface of her skin. After the years of rejection and indifference she had endured with William, she had no great desire to go through it again. And her feelings for William had been nothing compared to what she felt for Shane. If she laid her heart at his feet, and he still walked away…

Gamely she swallowed down the knot of panic that had lodged in her throat like a stone. No, she wasn’t going to consider the possibility of defeat. There was no point in it. If a person let fear stand in the way, she would never attain any dream, and if she’d ever had a dream worth reaching for, it was this one.

Squeezing her little gold heart, Faith lifted it and pressed a kiss to the keepsake for good luck. She eased herself out of bed, amazed at the amount of strength that simple action sapped from her. If getting out of bed left her breathless, following her dream was going to be a heck of a workout, she thought, as she stuffed her good arm into the sleeve of her ivory satin robe and awkwardly pulled the left side up to cover her injured shoulder.

Using the wall for support, she slowly made her way down the hall, music leading her as it had on a fateful night not so long ago. The first time she had heard Shane play had been her first glimpse of the man behind the stony facade, the man she had fallen in love with. The notes that now drifted to her softly through the still, dark house were just as revealing.

The piece he was playing was achingly tender, soft and sweet. And it filled her with hope. The longing in Shane’s music was real and strong. It reached out to her with a poignancy that brought tears to her eyes. This was not the music of a man who had coldly made the decision to walk away from love. This was the music of a man who wanted a dream but felt he couldn’t reach for it; who wanted a home but believed he couldn’t have one; who ached for love but let duty deny him of it.

Pausing to gather her strength, Faith leaned back against the wall and let the tears roll down her cheeks. They were tears for the beauty of Shane’s song, for the pain beneath it. Lord, please let me convince him, she prayed, her teeth digging into her full lower lip as a wave of emotion swept through her.

Ker-thump.

The music stopped abruptly and silence hummed in the air.

Ker-thump.

Faith held her breath as footsteps sounded faintly on the wood floor of the main hall. As they drew nearer, she caught the unmistakable sound of Shane grumbling. She pressed a fist to her mouth to stifle the giggle that threatened-a giggle that became a groan when she heard the soft creak of protest the fourth step of the grand staircase gave every time it was asked to bear weight.

Darn it all. Confronting Shane in her present condition wasn’t the most appealing idea she’d ever had, but she was determined, and confront him she would.

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” Shane muttered under his breath. He crept along the second-floor hall, walking on the balls of his feet so as not to make any sound that might scare off the ker-thumping “spook.” “There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

Isn’t there? The question came to him as clearly as if he had spoken it out loud.

No, he answered, only the slight hesitation in his step betraying his uncertainty. He ordered himself to drop the internal dialogue and concentrate on finding whoever or whatever it was clomping around in the middle of the night. It was probably Mr. Fitz. There was a weird old geezer if ever there was one. Ghosts? Bah, humbug.

What about Ellie? that clear, unrelenting inner voice questioned.

Shane bit back a curse as he paused at the end of the hall, his hand tightening and relaxing, tightening and relaxing on the grip of his gun. Ellie’s dead.

And her ghost is haunting your soul. Ellie died, and you blamed yourself. You’ve carried her ghost inside you all these years. Now you’re blaming yourself for what happened to Faith. Will you let her ghost haunt you as well?

Faith isn’t dead, no thanks to me. She’ll be fine as soon as I get out of her life.

Will she?

The image of her crying flashed quickly through his mind. The memory was as bright and sharp as a bolt of lightning, and it cut him to the quick. But he pushed the image away and answered the question with a firm yes.

Will you?

The question hung suspended in his mind. He refused to answer it, and it refused to leave him.

Ker-thump.

He breathed an unconscious sigh of relief as his attention focused once again on the mysterious noise. This time it sounded as if it had come from behind him. He could have sworn it had originated in this end of the hall. Damn, he thought, as he turned and headed back toward the stairs, his concentration wasn’t worth spit anymore. He was going to stay up there and find the source of this sound if it took the whole blasted night.

Flattening himself back against the wall, he narrowed his eyes, searching the shadows for any sign of movement. He saw nothing in the pale silver light that fell through the Palladian window. His hearing was sharp enough to pick up the slightest disturbance of the quiet. There were the sounds associated with an old house settling, like the creak of an elderly matriarch’s joints as age seeped into them. In the far distance was the indistinct whoosh of the sea surging against the shore. Nearer there was the unmistakable groan of a floorboard.

Shane’s even teeth flashed in the dark as a predatory smile tugged at his lips. Ghosts didn’t make the floors creak. Every muscle ready to spring to action, he moved along the wall with deceptive laziness. He had his quarry cornered. The sound had come from Captain Dugan’s suite, and there was only one way out-the door that was standing ajar before him.

The taste of victory was sweet, Shane reflected, as he slipped his hand around the polished brass knob and eased the door open. He had the bastard who’d been driving him nuts all these nights. And if it did turn out to be Jack Fitz, Shane was going to shake the old coot until his false teeth rattled. If it turned out to be a squirrel, he’d make a fur rug out of the little beast. If it turned out to be-

“Faith!”

How she kept from screaming, Faith didn’t know, but the sound seemed to get jammed crosswise in her throat. To have him suddenly behind her shouting her name, had her heart slamming against her breastbone. She wheeled wide-eyed, clutching her nightgown in a white-knuckled fist against her chest.

Shane flipped on the floor lamp that stood in the corner near the window. The scowl that took the place of surprise on his face was blacker than the night. “What the hell are you doing out of bed?”

“Oh,” Faith gasped, leaning heavily against the carved post at the foot of the enormous tester bed. She felt as limp and drained as a deflated balloon, but she wasn’t about to admit that to Shane. “Don’t bother apologizing for scaring me near to death!”

“Scaring you?” Shane said on a growl, his temper only burning hotter as he took in her pallor. She didn’t have any business climbing two stairs, let alone two flights of them! “I ought to give you the scare of your life. I ought to take you across my knee! You’re not supposed to be out of bed.”

“Pardon me for wanting to spare myself the job of filling in bullet holes in my walls,” she said dryly, shooting a pointed glance at his brand-new Smith and Wesson. “You can’t shoot Captain Dugan, you know. He’s been dead for nearly a hundred years already.”