Captive Read Free Page A

hero and the kind of man she had always dreamed about. The ghost might be a real nineteenth-century bastard. In fact, he might even be pissed as all hell because he was dead way before his time, or because she was disturbing him. That voice told her to leave as quickly as possible.
    But she was also a romantic. Alex had come to Blackwell House on an impulse. And being a romantic, deep in her heart she believed in all the foolishness she read in her romance novels. Had she been drawn here by some weird kind of fate? On order to meet Blackwell’s ghost?
    She knew she should leave. Logic and fear told her that. But she was strangely reluctant to do so. She watched dust motes dancing in the air. Dust motes—but where was the draft coming from? Alex had no answer. She was afraid of the answer.
    The rug.
    The thought came from nowhere. But it loomed in her mind, loud and crystal-clear. A voice inside her head.
The rug.
And suddenly she looked down at the threadbare Persian rug she stood upon. Her heart, beating wildly, soared. She had not a single doubt that the carpet was at least two hundred years old. That he had trod upon it a thousand times. Kneeling, she ripped a strip from one edge. She had not thought of taking a keepsake before, but now she was oddly jubilant.
    It was definitely time to go. Alex rushed to the door, gripping the knob. But something made her pause. Helplessly,compelled, she glanced back at the room one more time, almost afraid of what she would see—but she saw nothing and no one, just the massive bed. And the thought struck her out of the blue. Potent and powerful and terrible.
What would happen if she lay down there?
    Waiting for him?
    Images flashed in her head. Of a man and a woman, passionately entwined.
    Alex began to shake. The woman had red hair, but it was not her, it wasn’t, and she was merely fantasizing, and why was she so afraid? Yet the bed, where he had slept a thousand times, was the single object in his room with the most powerful connection to him.
    Alex realized how flushed and hot she was. She pushed her bangs out of her eyes, still staring at the four-poster, aware that she was almost in a trance. She knew she had to leave. That the situation was somehow dire. Even though the room, and the drapes, were absolutely still and absolutely silent. Even though the dust motes had ceased to dance and float. She knew that he was present.
    Alex hadn’t realized that she had somehow walked forward toward the bed, and that she stood within a handspan of it. Her mind screaming in protest, her heart beating with alarming strength, she watched her hand lift and reach out. She touched the royal blue quilt.
    And the moment she felt the soft silk, she came to her senses. Crying out, she stepped back from the bed as if burned, a single pace, and then she began to backpedal, hard and fast, furiously. And her spine and buttocks slammed into something hard and warm and, dammit, alive and male. Alex screamed, jumping.
    As she turned to face the intruder, she saw Blackwell, she did, with his hot black eyes and his open shirt—but when she blinked she realized she saw nothing but the scarred wood of the door and the tarnished brass knob. Alex began to shake violently.
    She had bumped into a man—she was certain of it.
    This time Alex did not hesitate. She ran from the room.
    “Are you all right, dear?”
    Alex jumped, her hand on the front door, genuinely startled.
    She faced the little lady reluctantly, out of breath and terrified. “I’m fine,” she lied. She could not smile.
    She had just seen a ghost. She had just felt a ghost.
    “You’re green,” the blue-haired lady said. “Are you unwell?”
    “I …” Alex could not continue. Her gaze wandered past the lady, to the stairs. She would faint if she saw Blackwell coming down those steps right now.
    Suddenly the museum attendant stared. Her smile was gone. “You didn’t see something, did you?” Her gaze had followed