Nora Roberts - The Fall Of Shane Mackade

"Shane, honey, I told you I'd try to drop by."

He lifted a hand in a casual wave, even as he felt the temperature surrounding him drop to the subzero range. "Ah, that's Darla. She's a friend of mine."

"I bet." The chip was back on Rebecca's shoulder, and it was the size of a redwood. She cocked a brow and curved her lips mockingly. He didn't have to know the mockery was for herself. "Don't let me keep you from your...friend, Shane, honey. I'm sure you're a very busy boy."

"Look, damn it—"

Darla called out again, her husky voice a little impatient. Shane saw, with unaccustomed panic, that she was getting out of the car. With anyone else, the meeting would have been easy, even amusing. With Rebecca, he had a feeling it would be deadly. She'd eat Darla for breakfast.

"Listen, I—"

"I don't have time to look, or to listen," Rebecca said, interrupting him, desperately afraid she'd make a fool of herself in front of the stunning woman picking her way over the lawn in thin high heels. "I have work to do. You and Darla have a nice visit."

She strode off, leaving Shane caught between the willing and the wanted.

During her stay at the inn, Rebecca had established a pattern. She rose early enough to join the other guests for breakfast. It wasn't the food, as marvelous as Cassie's cooking was, that nudged her out of bed and downstairs. She wanted the opportunity to interview her companions under the guise of a breezy morning chat.

It was work for her to keep it casual, not to fall into the habits of analyst or scientist. She'd been rewarded over coffee and waffles that morning by a young couple who both claimed to have felt a presence in the bridal suite during the night.

Now, alone in her room late at night, the inn quiet around her, Rebecca read over the notes she'd hurriedly made that morning.

Subjects corroborate each other's experience. Sudden cold, a strong scent of roses, the sound of a female weeping. Three senses involved. Subjects excited by experience rather than frightened. Very clear and firm when reporting each phenomenon. Neither claimed a sighting, but female subject described a sense of deep sadness which occurred just after temperature fluctuation and lasted until the scent of roses had faded.

Interesting, Rebecca mused as she worked the notes into a more formal style, including names and dates. As for herself, she'd slept like a baby, if only for a few short hours. She rarely slept more than five hours in any case, and the night before she had made do with three, in hopes of recording an event of her own.

But her room had remained comfortable and quiet throughout the night.

After her notes were refined, and her journal entry for the day was complete, she switched over to the book she was toying with writing. The Haunting of Antietam.

She rather liked the title, though she could picture some of her more illustrious colleagues muttering over it at faculty teas and university functions. Let them mutter, she thought. She'd toed the line all her life. It was time she did a little boat rocking.

It would be a new challenge to write something that was descriptive, even emotional, rather than dry and factual. To bring to life her vision, her impressions of the small town, with its quiet hills, the shadow of the mountains in the distance, those wide, fertile fields.

She needed to spend some time on the battlefield, absorb its ambience. But for now she had plenty to say about the inn, and its original inhabitants.

She worked for an hour, then two, losing herself in the story of the Barlows—the tragic Abigail, the unbending Charles, the children who had lost their mother at a tender age. Thanks to Cassie, Rebecca had another character to add. A man Abigail had loved and sent away. Rebecca suspected the man might have been of some authority in Antietam during that time. The sheriff, perhaps. It was too lovely a coincidence to overlook, and she intended to research it thoroughly.

She was so deep in her work that it took her several minutes to notice the hum of her equipment. Startled by it, she jerked back, stared at the monitor of her sensor.

Was that a draft? she wondered, and sprang up, shuddering. The temperature gauge was acutely sensitive. Rebecca watched with amazement as the numbers dropped rapidly from a comfortable seventy-two. She was hugging her arms by the time it reached thirty, and she could see her own breath puff out quickly as her heart thudded.

Yet she felt nothing but the cold. Nothing. She heard nothing, smelled nothing.

The lady doesn't come in here.

That was what Emma had told her. But did the master? It had to be Charles. She'd read so much about him, the thought filled her with a jumble of anger, fear and anticipation.

Moving quickly, Rebecca checked her recorder, the cameras. The quiet blip on a machine registered her presence and for an instant, an instant almost too quick to notice—something other.

Then it was gone, over, and warmth poured back into the room.

Nearly wild with excitement, she snatched up her recorder. "Event commenced at 2:08 and fifteen seconds, a.m., with dramatic temperature drop of forty-two degrees Fahrenheit. Barely measurable energy fluctuation lasting only a fraction of a second, followed by immediate rise in temperature. Event ended at 2:09 and twenty seconds, a.m. Duration of sixty-five seconds."

She stood for a moment, the recorder in her hand, trying to will it all to start again. She knew it had been Charles, she felt it, and her pulse was still scrambling. Dispassionately she wondered what her blood pressure would register.

"Come on, come on, you bully, you coward! You son of a bitch! Come back!"

The sound of her own voice, the raw intensity in it, had her forcing herself to take several deep breaths. Losing objectivity, she warned herself. Any project was doomed without objectivity.

So she made herself sit, monitored the equipment for another thirty minutes. Precisely she added the event to her records before shutting the computer down.

Too restless to sleep, she left her room. In the hall, she stood quietly, waiting, hoping, but there was only the dark and the stillness. She moved downstairs, lingering as she tried to envision the murdered Confederate soldier, the shocked Abigail, the terrified servants, the murdering Barlow.

They were all less substantial than thoughts to her.

She tried every room—the parlor where some said you could smell wood smoke from a fire that wasn't burning, the library, which both Regan and Cassie avoided as much as possible, because they felt uncomfortable there. In the solarium there was nothing but leafy plants, cozy chairs, and the light of the moon through the glass.

She struggled against discouragement as she wandered into the kitchen. There had been a moment, she reminded herself. She'd experienced it. Patience was as important as an open and curious mind.

She was drawn to the window, and that open and curious mind drifted past the gardens and the lawn, through the trees, to the fields beyond. And the house where Shane was sleeping.

The urge was so strong it shocked her. The urge to go out, walk over that grass, over those fields. She wanted to go into that house, to go to him. Foolishness, she told herself. It was doubtful he was alone. She imagined he was snuggled up with that beautiful brunette, or some other equally appealing woman, for the night.

But still the urge was there, so powerful, so elementally physical it brought an ache to her belly. Was it the place that pulled at her? she wondered. Or the man?

It was something to think about. Something she would have to gather the courage to explore. No more mousy, fade-into-the-corner Rebecca, she thought. No more spending her life huddled behind a desk or a handy book. Experience was what she'd come here for. And if Shane MacKade offered experience, she'd sample it.

In her own time, of course. At her own pace.

He saw her as a woman who could hold her own with him, and she was going to find a way to do exactly that.

He wanted to take her to bed.

How does that make you feel, Dr. Knight?

Frightened, exhilarated, curious.

Frightened, you say. Of the sexual experience?

Sex is a basic biological function, a human experience. Why would I be frightened of it? Because it remains unknown, she answered herself. So it frightens, exhilarates and stirs the curiosity. He stirs the curiosity. Once I have control of the situation—

Ah, Dr. Knight, so it's a matter of control? How do you feel about the possible loss of control?

Uncomfortable, which is why I don't intend to lose it.

She blew out a breath, shut off the questioning part of her brain. But she couldn't quite shut off that nagging urge, so she walked quickly out of the kitchen and went upstairs to bed.

But she dreamed, and the dreams were full of laughter….

A man's arms around her, the two of them rolling over a soft, giving mattress like wrestling children. Giggles muffled against warm lips, teasing fingers combing through her long, tangled hair.

Hush, John, you''ll wake the baby.

You 're making all the noise.

Quick hands sneaking under her cotton nightgown, finding wonderful spots to linger.

You 've got too many clothes on, Sarah. I want you naked.

Mock slaps and tussles, more giggles.

I'm still carrying around extra weight from the baby.

You're perfect. He's perfect. God, I want you. I want you, Sarah. I love you. Let me love you.

While the laughter stilled, the joy didn't. And the soft feather bed gave quietly beneath the weight and rhythm of mating….

She was groggy the next day, not from lack of sleep, but from the dream that wouldn't quite leave her. For most of the afternoon she closeted herself in her room, using her modem to call up snatches of data on the population of Antietam, circa 1862.