Spearing a piece of meat, Isabella lifted it for a closer inspection. “Why do I think this never had feathers?”
Donovan kept his expression neutral. “It’s squirrel.”
Her eyes came up. “Squirrel,” she repeated. Her fork went down. “As in Rocky the Flying?”
“Or a close relative.” Resting his forearms on the table, he snagged a bottle. “More wine?”
“I fed peanuts to park squirrels when I was growing up.”
“If you can eat Thumper and Chicken Little, Isabella, why a problem with Rocky?”
Still staring, she moved her glass forward. “I was being polite. I prefer not to eat any of them. I’ll be a little more rude next time.” Ignoring the lights that surged and faded overhead, she slid her gaze to his face. “Insanity isn’t an inherited trait, you know.”
He swirled his wine, swallowed a bitter mouthful. “Do you want to tell my mother that, or leave it to the doctors who are treating her?”
“For what?”
“Paranoia mostly, with a little ADHD thrown in on the side. And then there was my grandmother who, depending on which day of the week it happened to be, saw herself as Eleanor Roosevelt, Mary Pickford and, toward the end of her life, Anna McNeill Whistler.”
“Your grandmother thought she was Whistler’s mother?”
“Until the day she died. She wanted to be buried in North Carolina, where Anna was born. During a rare moment of lucidity, my mother denied the request and had her remains interred in the family crypt.”
Isabella set her chin on a fisted hand. “You’re going to tell me I own the crypt, aren’t you?”
“Inasmuch as anyone can own such a thing.”
“What about this place? I heard it was the coach house for the manor.”
“It was, but you don’t own it. The cottage sits in the middle of the only acre of land the Darks held on to when the manor was sold early in the twentieth century. The buyer was a shipbuilder from Portland. Your ex bought it, sans acre, from the last of the builder’s descendants.”
“Well, I’m fascinated.” She pushed her plate away as the lights winked off and on. “Does this disco ball effect happen a lot?”
Donovan took another sip. “Haden rewired the place last year. Answer’s yes.” When she continued her speculative regard, he let his lips curve, considered the wine in his glass. “Something else?”
“I’m not sure.” Leaning in on her forearms, she twirled a strand of his hair around her finger. “You’re a strange sort of cop, Donovan Black. And don’t say it runs in the family.”
He let her touch, made a point of not lowering his gaze to the vee of her dark red sweater. “It doesn’t,” he answered. “I’m an aberration in that regard.”
“In lots of regards, I imagine.”
“With one exception.”
She gave his hair a tug. “Nice try, Black, but my uncle’s a Park Avenue shrink. Insanity doesn’t walk, run or gallop in families.”
“A shrink, huh?” Even knowing he shouldn’t, Donovan found himself wanting to sample her mouth. One brief taste to satisfy the hunger in his belly. Then he’d remove himself from the moment and from temptation. From Mystic Harbor as well, if he was smart—which he could be or not, depending on the situation.
The lights dimmed again. He heard Haden swearing on the back porch, but his eyes remained on Isabella. On her soft, striking features, her long, rain-curled hair and her bluer-than-blue eyes.
He wasn’t sure who actually moved, but he figured it was probably fifty-fifty. However it happened, his mouth was suddenly on hers, not to taste now, but to dive in and explore.
Catching her jaw between his thumb and fingers, he angled her head to deepen the kiss. She made a sound of approval in her throat, tangled her own fingers in his hair and pulled him closer.
At their first meeting, she’d shoved him away. He should have left it at that. Left her to face whatever demons lurked inside Darkwood Manor alone. Instead, his tongue was on a voyage of discovery in her mouth, fencing with hers, then sliding past it, until the pulse hammering in his head threatened to strip away decades of control.
When the lights above them sparked, a red warning flashed in his brain. If it looked and felt dangerous, it probably was. Even as he tested the limits of his restraint, Donovan knew he should end this now, walk away and not look back.
He wasn’t sure if he could have done it or not. The next time the lights zapped off, they stayed that way, plunging the cottage into full, silent darkness. He let her bite his bottom lip, was thinking about trailing his mouth along the side of her neck when they heard it—a long, keening wail that echoed through the fog and shadow outside.
It started on the periphery of his mind and built, from a thread of sound to a shriek that had Isabella’s fingernails sinking into his shoulders.
“My God, what is that?”
He couldn’t see her clearly, but knew she was staring at the front window.
His eyes slid in the same direction. “Some people say a pack of wolves wandered down from Quebec. A few think it’s a wild dog.”
She didn’t pull back, and his hand still formed a light V around her throat. “Some,” she repeated. As the wail came again, he felt a shiver ripple through her. “What do the rest of the people believe?”
“What you’d expect.” He kept his tone calm. “That Aaron Dark’s spirit has come to reclaim his house. And if he can’t get it using fear, he’ll resort to what he knows best. Death.”
“YOU KNOW I DON’T BUY any of that, don’t you?”
They were the first words out of Isabella’s mouth when Donovan halted his black Tundra behind her on the narrow roadway.
She’d been pacing in front of the Hang Ten Lodge, the only other off-season accommodations Mystic Harbor had to offer, waiting for him to join her and going over his remarks about Aaron Dark’s afterlife agenda.
She didn’t think he really believed in ghosts. In the possibility of genetic insanity, yes, but not in encounters with otherworldly beings.
He was trying to frighten her again, and she didn’t appreciate the repeat performance one bit. Especially when her head continued to spin from a kiss like—well, like nothing she’d ever experienced before. Her lips were still tingling, and sorting through her jumbled thoughts had only become possible in the last five minutes.
Back at his place, Haden’s announcement that the power outage extended beyond the walls of his cottage had barely registered.
“You must be tuckered out,” he’d remarked with a sympathetic tut. “Put that sound you heard out of your mind. It’s a story for later. For tonight, you go to my friend George’s lodge. State it’s in, the manor’s not fit for flesh-and-blood humans. Last owner slept on a horsehair sofa so lumpy it makes my yard look like a putting green. We’ll talk tomorrow about the goings-on up there. Meantime, I’ll call ahead, tell George you’re on your way.”
Horsehair sofas, mad ghosts and one incredible kiss. If Katie had been a weak-minded person, Isabella might have believed she’d run. But they weren’t merely cousins, they were best friends and had been since before she could remember. Katie had not left Darkwood Manor voluntarily.
Isabella kept pacing while Donovan leaned against the hood of his truck and watched.
“Ghosts, whether real or imagined, don’t whisk people and their vehicles away,” she maintained in passing. Cell phone in hand, she tried her cousin’s