Midnight Bayou

you.”
    As he spoke, the door slammed shut behind him. He jolted, spun and found himself plunged back into the dark, with only the lightning blasts and the beam of his flashlight. The weight fell into his chest like a rock, cutting off his air. The room was empty, freezing, and the panic leaped at his throat.
    He dragged at the doorknob, his sweat-slicked hands sliding off the icy brass. He could feel his choked gasps wanting to rise into shouts and screams, pleas and prayers. Dizziness drove him down to his knees, where he fumbled frantically with the knob, wrenched and tugged at the door.
    When he managed to pull it open, he crawled out on his hands and knees, then lay facedown on the floor with his heart thundering in his chest as the storm thundered over the house.
    “Okay, I’m okay. I’m okay, goddamn it, and I’m getting up off the floor and going back to bed.”
    He might be losing sleep, Declan thought as he got shakily to his feet, but he’d learned a couple of things.
    If what he’d seen inside the nursery was truth and not some self-generated fantasy, Abigail Rouse Manet hadn’t left Manet Hall of her own free will.
    And he had more than one ghost on his hands.
    S he was probably making a mistake, Lena thought as she slicked a little black dress down her body. She’d already made several small mistakes where Declan Fitzgerald was concerned. It irritated her, as she rarely made mistakes when it came to men.
    If there was one thing she’d learned from her mother, it was how to handle the male species. It was a reverse tutelage. She made a habit of doing exactly the opposite of what Lilibeth did and had done when it came to relationships.
    The process had kept Lena heart-whole for nearly thirty years. She had no desire, and no intention, of putting herself into a man’s hands. Metaphorically speaking, she thought with a smirk as she painted her lips.
    She liked being in the right man’s hands well enough, when she was in the mood to be handled.
    A woman who didn’t enjoy sex, in her opinion, just didn’t know how to pick her partners cannily enough. A smart woman culled out men who were willing and able to be shown how that woman wanted to be pleasured. And a woman pleasured tended to give a man a good, strong ride.
    Everybody ended up winning.
    The problem was, Declan had the talent for putting her in the mood for sex all the damn time. She was not in the habit of being guided by her hormones.
    The wisest, safest thing for a woman to do about sex was to be in control of it. To decide the when, the where, the who and how. Men, well, they were just randy by nature. She couldn’t blame them for it.
    And women who claimed not to try to stir men up were either cold-blooded or liars.
    If she’d believed she and Declan were headed toward a simple affair that began and ended with a mutual buzz, she wouldn’t have been concerned. But there was more to him than that. Too many layers to him, she thought, and she couldn’t seem to get through them all and figure him out.
    More, and much more worrying, there was another layer to her reaction to him besides simple lust. That, too, was complicated and mysterious.
    She liked the look of him, and the Yankee bedrock sound of his voice. And then he’d gone and hit her soft spot with his obvious affection for her grandmama.
    Got her blood heated up, too, she admitted. The man had a very skilled pair of lips.
    And when he wasn’t paying attention, a wounded look in his eyes. She was a sucker for hurting hearts.
    Best to take it slow. She arched her neck and ran the crystal wand of her perfume bottle over her skin. Slow and easy. No point in getting to the end of the road unless you’d enjoyed the journey.
    She trailed the wand over the tops of her breasts and imagined his fingers there. His mouth.
    It had been a long time since she’d wanted a man quite this . . . clearly, she realized. And since it was too late for a quick, anonymous roll in the sheets, it would be wise to get to know him a little better before she let him think he’d talked her into bed.
    “Right on time, aren’t you, cher ?” she commented aloud at the knock on her door. She gave her reflection a last check, blew herself a kiss, and walked to the front door.
    He looked good in a suit. Very classy and GQ , she decided. She reached out, ran the stone-gray lapel between her thumb and fingers. “Mmm. Don’t you clean up nice, cher .”
    “Sorry, all the blood just drained out of