Heart of Gold - By Tami Hoag Page 0,26

warning. “Shane, please, stop accusing my friends.”

“It’s my job,” he said, exasperated by her overabundance of blind trust.

“Well, you’re very good at it. The only person who’s managed to escape your jaundiced eye is Lindy.”

Shane did a better job of ignoring her sarcasm than he did of ignoring the way her crossed arms lifted her breasts. The womanly mounds plumped together beneath the fabric of her sweatshirt, the outline of hard nipples clearly indicating she wore no bra. Business, Shane, he told himself. Strictly business.

“What about secret passages? Have you found any as you’ve been working on the house?”

The man was remarkable. “Who do we look like, Charlie’s Angels?” Faith asked. “I’m opening the place as an inn, not a spook house.”

“You’re the one going on about ghosts,” Shane grumbled. He rubbed at the incessant pounding in his right temple. Damn, but his head was feeling fuzzy. He barely heard Faith’s next words through the thick, cotton-wool fog that enveloped his brain.

“We have them.” She shrugged, knowing she probably wouldn’t have been able to convince Shane had Captain Dugan materialized at her side that very moment, peg leg and all. “What can I say?”

Shane pushed himself away from the door, his legs feeling as thick and heavy as tree trunks. The puzzle would have to wait until morning to be solved. He couldn’t think anymore. Damned if he was going to be able to move. He had to find a place to sit down for a couple of minutes.

Faith’s heart lurched as she realized how pale he looked. His face had gone as white as the apparitions he refused to believe in. Alarm streaked through her as he took another step and dropped like a rock at her feet.

“We’ve got to get him to the hospital. Jayne, go call the ambulance.”

“No. No ambulance. We can’t attract the attention. The whole case will be shot to hell.”

“Damn your case!”

Shane could hear the conversation going on above him. He recognized the voices as those of agent Del Matthews and Faith Kincaid. Del sounded unflappable. Faith sounded frantic. They both sounded far away.

He tried to rouse the strength to stand, but his body was nothing more than dead weight, oblivious to the commands of his considerable will. He couldn’t even muster the energy to offer an opinion on the situation. It took every scrap of power he had to concentrate, to keep from slipping over the edge into the black void of unconsciousness.

“I can handle this, Ms. Kincaid. I was a medic in ’Nam. It’s not as serious as it looks.”

“He’ll need medication—”

“It’ll be taken care of ma’am.”

Shane forced his eyes open a slit and caught the look Alaina Montgomery shot at Del. “Lord, they’re worse than the damn Boy Scouts—always prepared.”

Suddenly Mr. Fitz loomed overhead like a giant billy goat, scratching at his snaggled whiskers, an unholy light in his eyes. The smell of fish hung around him like an acrid cloud. “Lord, ladies, what did ye do to the rascal? Did he have it comin’?”

“Mr. Fitz, please stand back,” Matthews asked, exasperated. The towheaded agent leaned over Shane with a penlight, checking his pupils for response.

Shane squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them again, Faith was bent over him, concern etched in every feature of her heart-shaped face. She sure was pretty, he noted, needing something to fasten his mind on. Her teeth dug into her full lower lip. He remembered how sweet that lip tasted—like cherry soda. She reached down and stroked his cheek with fingertips that felt like icicles on his burning skin.

She was worried about him. It was there in her lovely sable eyes, but Shane could feel it more than see it. He grasped it with a sense that had no name and wasn’t counted among the five most normally used. He could feel Faith’s concern. And he wondered, just before he lost consciousness, what it would be like to let down his guard and let this woman’s concern touch his innermost self, the lonely man he kept locked inside him behind walls of wariness and cynicism.

Heaven. It would be like heaven, but heaven was a long way out of his reach.

The dream he fell into was an old one. For months it had been his nightly companion, but he had gradually banished it. In recent years it had returned to haunt him only when he had been too weak to fight it off. This was one of those times. The shiver that coursed through his