Chained (3 page)

Heat burst inside her, overlaid by fear.

What was she doing? And with whom?

As though he sensed her uncertainty, he increased the erotic
quality of the kiss, his lips moving over hers with the expertise she’d always
known he would possess.

Her heartbeat quickened at the sensuality of the encounter.

She wanted more. So much more. Everything she had been
denied with him in the past.

And he must know that. Must feel the same.

“Open for me,” he murmured, and this time he spoke in the
warm, sexy voice that she remembered.

She did as he asked, allowing the kiss to deepen, feeling
his tongue play with the inside of her lips, then the serrated line of her
teeth, before plunging farther in to stroke along the side of her tongue.

When he caught her lower lip between his teeth and gently
nipped at her, she heard a small moan rise in her throat.

“You like that.”

“You know I do.”

“And you don’t want me to stop?”

Without waiting for an answer, he touched her then, his
fingers stroking her cheeks, her jawline, her neck, moving downward, sending
tingles of sensation over her skin.

His lips came back to hers and then feathered soft kisses
over her closed eyelids, her brows, the tender line of her jaw.

Enveloped by the arousing spell he was weaving, caught
between fantasy and reality, she tugged at the covers, pulling them down to her
waist to give him better access to her body.

He accepted the invitation, his hand skimming over her
breasts, his touch light and playful and at the same time sensual, flooding her
with need.

She felt her nipples bead under her T-shirt, felt his thumbs
stroke back and forth across the crests.

Yet even as she responded to him, doubts stirred in her
mind. When she’d arrived here, the ghost had frightened her. Talking to
Matthew, touching him, kissing him had pushed the fear into the background. Now
it leaped to the front of her mind again.

She must be under some kind of spell, and she was the only
one who could release herself.

She brought her hands up, pushing at his broad shoulders.
They felt solid. More solid than they had appeared when she had seen him
standing across the room. It was like he was really here, but what would happen
if she opened her eyes?

She didn’t want to find out, and she knew this encounter had
gone too far. At least for her own sanity.

“Don’t,” she whispered.

“
Why not
?”

 She asked herself the same question. Why not? Was it
because this was wrong? Or because it stirred feelings she could never satisfy?

She heard a sigh ease out of him as his weight lifted off of
her. His tone changed as he said, “Tell me why you came here.”

“Men from San Marcos tried to ambush me at my house in
Phoenix.”

“How do you know who they were?”

“Who else would it be?”

“Describe them,” he said, his voice all business now. The
Decorah Security agent on assignment.

She thought about the man who had faced her in the alley.

“Dark hair. Dark eyes. Medium height. Muscular. I couldn’t
see much. They looked like Lopez’s
hombres
.”

“Okay,” he answered, and it sounded like he had left her
bedside and was standing across the room. “I’ll guard you while you’re here.
Nothing more and nothing less.”

Then he was gone. Vanished, as silently and as swiftly as he
had come to her.

Or had he ever been there?

CHAPTER THREE

Isabella lay in bed, aroused and unfulfilled. Trying to
dismiss the humming of her body, she focused on what had happened to her.
Either she had had an erotic encounter with a ghost or she had had an erotic
dream about a man she’d been hot for as a teenager. A man who had guarded her
here, and now he said he was guarding her again.

But that didn’t make sense, in more than one way. Like, if
he was a ghost, wouldn’t he haunt the place where he died?

She couldn’t suppress a wry laugh. Was she so off balance
that now she was trying to be logical about ghosts?

Still scrambling for explanations, she thought about the
vortexes that were all over the Sedona area. The places of power that the
Native Americans had known about for thousands of years.

In modern times, they had become famous among adherents of
New Age philosophies, people who incorporated Eastern and Western traditions
into their spirituality and who took ideas from many different fields as
diverse as motivational psychology, holistic health, parapsychology, and even
quantum physics. Rather than relying on dogma, they were willing to use
anything that worked for them. Including the vortexes.

They had fascinated Isabella, and she’d read as much as she
could about them. In the physical world, they were forces of wind and water.
Like the circular motion of a tornado or water whirling down a drain.

In Sedona, they were created by spiraling spiritual energy—
locations where the conditions were right to facilitate prayer, meditation and
healing. Mystical, magical places, if you put it in those terms.

From her earlier research, she knew they were believed to
have an energy flow that existed in multiple dimensions. Some people could get
in touch with that energy. And maybe she was one of them.

She remembered when she’d gone riding in the desert with
Matthew as a teenager, there were locations where she’d felt something strange,
something that seemed to connect her with a spiritual world she couldn’t see.

Was that a factor in her encounter with him now?

That stopped her. When she’d first seen the flickering light
in the corner of the room, she hadn’t been sure what was happening. Now she
discarded the idea that it had been a dream. What had happened was real,
regardless of whether anyone else would believe it if she told them.

 The ghost of Matthew Houseman had come to her bedroom and
kissed her, touched her, talked to her.

Should she be thrilled or afraid?

She lay in bed for an hour longer, but she knew she was too
wired to go back to sleep. Finally, when the dark of night had changed to the
gray light before dawn, she swung her legs over the side of the bed.

In the bathroom, she stared at herself in the mirror, trying
to see what Matthew had seen. Instead she focused on the dark smudges under her
eyes. She brushed back her shiny black hair and then let it fall over her
forehead again.

She was still staring at herself when another thought
occurred to her. If she was really being haunted by a ghost who had come to her
bedroom, then he could watch her anytime he wanted. Did she have any privacy?
What if he was spying on her now?

Because she’d go mad if she kept up that kind of
speculation, she put it out of her mind and went about her business.

Bringing along the gun, she went into the kitchen and heated
water on the stove. Back in the bathroom, she mixed in some cold from the tap
until she had two inches of warm water in the tub. Still she hesitated before
pulling off her shirt. With a grimace, she finally stripped and climbed into
the tub where she washed quickly and dressed again in jeans and a T-shirt.

The shallow bath refreshed her. In the kitchen, she heated
more water and made coffee in the French press her father had used, then
brought in half and half from the springhouse and added a generous amount.

Breakfast was more bread and cheese, because her appetite
was almost nonexistent. Now that the sun was up, she positioned her chair so
that she could stare out the window, watching in one direction and then the
other. A dust cloud would tell her if someone was coming up the road, but she
saw none, which was reassuring. She was alone here—at least in the conventional
sense.

As she took small bites of her meal, her gaze swung to the
grove of sycamore trees. That was where the wind had come from last night. And
the faint music.

What would she find if she walked over there now?

Unable to finish her small meal, she pushed back her chair
and stood. With a sense of anticipation and also of trepidation, she buckled on
a holster for her gun, then slipped out the back door and headed across the
ranch yard to the grove.

The countryside was dry, but the runoff from the spring
produced enough water for the trees to flourish.

This morning, a slight breeze ruffled the leaves. Nothing
like the roaring lion of the night before.

As she slipped into the shade under the spreading branches,
the temperature seemed to drop a few degrees, making her shiver.

She stood very still, her gaze sweeping the flickering light
and shadow as she looked for the man who had visited her last night. If it had
really happened at all.

“Matthew?” she called, her voice barely above a whisper.

No one answered, yet she stayed where she was. And as she
probed the shadows, she saw something that made her draw in a quick, startled
breath.

A man was standing about twenty feet away. He’d been so
still and quiet that she hadn’t even seen him. Or had he been there seconds
before?

She called him a man, but that wasn’t quite accurate. He was
wearing jeans and a work shirt, like the clothing he’d worn when he’d been
guarding her. His dark hair was shaggier than she remembered. His eyes were
dark. His jaw was tense. But the flickering light passed right through his body
as though he were a figure in a movie being projected onto a gauzy, wavering
curtain.

It was such a strange sight that she caught her breath.

He started to hum—not the same song from last night, but the
spooky one. “Ghost Riders in the Sky.” It was the song about the dead men
doomed to endlessly chase a phantom herd of cattle through the clouds.

When she took an involuntary step back, he spoke.

“Don’t leave now.”

Instead of answering, she took another backward step toward
the house, thinking it was a mistake to have come here.

He spoke again. “We’re meeting here because you called me.”

She answered with a tight nod, still considering running.
She gave up that idea when she analyzed the situation. He had appeared in front
of her. There was no reason he couldn’t materialize behind her to block her
escape if he wanted.

Trying to calm the pounding of her heart, she studied him.

“You’re not real,” she whispered.

“I am. More real than . . . before. I think it’s because of
you.”

“How?”

“You bring me back to myself. I remember more. But not
everything.”

He kept his gaze on her. “You were younger when you stayed
here.”

“Yes.”

“How long ago was it?”

“Eight years.”

“A long time.”

She nodded.

She saw his face take on a faraway look. “Back then, I
wasn’t supposed to touch you. But we were together a lot. There were horses in
the stable. We went riding. I gave you shooting lessons and taught you rope
tricks.”

“Yes,” she answered, remembering those things and more, like
the awareness that had always hummed between them.

Those memories were some of her most vivid. But what had
happened in her bedroom last night was even more vivid.

 She had felt his lips against hers. Felt his hands on her
body.

She saw him shift his weight from one foot to the other.
“Before you came here, I lost a lot of memories. And more.”

The plaintive way he said it tore at her.

“I was here for a long time. Alone. In the wind. Yes, I
could move things with the wind. And sometimes I sang the cowboy songs that I
loved. But . . .” His voice trailed off before he started again. “But I didn’t
know who I was. I only knew I had to be here. To protect this place. Or maybe I
was to wait for you. I’m not sure now.”

“When did you know who you were?”

He turned one palm up. “When you asked my name. You asked,
and it came to me and I knew it was right. I wanted to know more. Touching you,
talking to you made a difference.”

“Why?”

“Maybe because it’s so . . . physical. And because we were
close.”

Yes, they had been close, closer than either of them had
ever been able to admit.

 She saw him swallow. “I think you can help me get back more
of Matthew Houseman. If you want to.”

Did she? The question was asked and answered in one breath.

“How?”

“Like last night. Let me . . . get close to you.”

He walked toward her, not in the way he had glided across
the bedroom last night but with the long-legged gait of a tall man. It looked
like the familiar image of Matthew Houseman striding toward her, except that
she still had the unnerving sensation of seeing through him.

Maybe he saw the discomfort on her face because he said, “I
think it will be better if you close your eyes. The way you did before.”

She still could have backed away. Instead she stood where
she was, her eyes closed and her breath shallow in her lungs, breathing in his
scent again.

Had she gone crazy? Was she so unbalanced that she was
trying to bring back something she had never really had?

She felt warmth radiating from him before he touched her and
had time to wonder about how that could be possible. Then she felt his body,
solid and masculine. His arms wrapped around her back, folding her close. She
molded herself to him, her eyes still closed as she rested her cheek against
his shoulder, holding him tightly, absorbing the reality of him.

“Isabella,” he murmured, saying her name like a man who had
finally come home from a long voyage or a war. “
Querida
.”

His hands stroked up and down her back, molding her upper
body to his.

It felt so right to be in his arms, like a dream come true,
and she knew at that moment how much she needed the strength of Matthew
Houseman.

She had come here feeling lost and alone, yet wondering if
it was really the right thing to do.