When Twilight Comes - By B. J. Daniels Page 0,21

left the country as he’d planned.

But if Franco hadn’t taken his money and run off, then who did that leave? Lorenzo. And if Lorenzo had taken it, then he obviously was waging war.

Raymond checked to make sure the security system was on and the guard dogs were patrolling the area inside the fence around his house, just in case. So he’d have to find out who had taken his money—and why. First he would try to find Franco and this alleged girlfriend. If that lead proved false, then he would have to deal with Lorenzo. If Dante had his money, Raymond would be justified in killing him. And killing him in the most painful way possible.

He started to pick up the phone to call Jenna. He felt a small thrill at just the thought of hearing her voice. But he was also worried. Lorenzo was a hothead. If he had found out that Raymond had helped Jenna, then the woman was in danger.

What would it hurt to call her and make sure everything was all right?

JENNA QUICKLY PACKED UP what little she’d unpacked last night, pulling the duffel out of the closet and putting it beside her suitcase. She couldn’t stop shaking.

As she turned to put the last item in the suitcase she felt something brush by her. She caught her breath, freezing in place as the cool air caressed her cheek and trailed down her throat to the crest of her breasts above the silk gown. She leaned back, closing her eyes, caught again in the dream. She surrendered to it, washed with a yearning that made her tremble. And then it was gone.

She opened her eyes and looked around the empty room. My God, she was losing her mind. These feelings, this fantasy… Upset with herself, she finished packing and angrily snapped shut the suitcase. What was wrong with her?

It was the hotel. The old photograph of the man at the bar. What had she seen in him that made her call him up in her dreams? She hated to think. He wasn’t anything like Lorenzo, she realized. He was dark like Lorenzo and there was no doubt he had a confident air about him that verged on arrogance, but he was nothing like her ex.

How did she know that?

She felt a shiver. She couldn’t know anything about the man in the photograph. But there had been a man who resembled him. The man she’d seen from the third-floor window when they’d arrived. Except according to the security guard, she and Lexi were the only guests here.

She’d imagined him. Because she needed someone to love?

Jenna scoffed at the idea. She wasn’t sure she would ever trust another man. And the dream had nothing to do with love, but a whole lot to do with lust. She could well understand why she would imagine a gentle lover in her dreams. Even why she would draw him from out of the past to come to her. She’d never known a man’s loving touch. Lorenzo had been a fierce, brutal lover who took rather than gave.

Better to have a dream lover.

Except, Jenna thought with a frown, last night he’d only frustrated her. Made her want him, ache for him. She shivered, caught between desire and revolt. She didn’t want to need any man—even a dream lover, but part of her feared he would return in her dreams tonight. Another part feared he wouldn’t. She had the oddest feeling that he only existed for her here, in this eerie hotel with its ghosts.

How pitiful that if she wanted a man to love her with any tenderness, she’d had to find him in a dream.

She looked down at her left hand, to her engagement and wedding rings. She’d put them both back on, thinking it would make it easier to pretend to be married when she and Lexi were living in another country.

But just the thought of Lorenzo… She painfully wrenched both rings from her finger and threw them into her purse.

Jenna glanced back at the bed that she’d hurriedly made, leaving no sign of the impressions she’d thought she’d seen earlier. Imagined? Just as she’d imagined the man from the photograph coming to her in her dream?

Suddenly she just wanted out of this place. It made her feel things, sense things, yearn for things she couldn’t have.

This hotel scared her. It was as if it knew her needs and desires. She and Lexi would be safer on the road than here, Jenna