Heart of Gold - By Tami Hoag Page 0,23
it. I’m sorry.”
“First a compliment, now an apology.” Faith shook her head. “Really, Mr. Callan, you’re making me giddy,” she said, teasing lights sparkling in her dark eyes as she fanned herself with her hand.
“Is the apology accepted?”
She nodded but didn’t look at him. Was he apologizing only for his belief in her culpability or for the kiss as well?
Overhead the sound began. Ker-thump … ker-thump … ker-thump …
Shane tensed. Faith smiled. “It’s Captain Dugan.”
He stared at her as if she’d suddenly begun speaking Portuguese. “Who?”
“The man who built the place.”
“He’s dead.” His statement held all the finality of the fact.
Faith rolled her eyes. “I know that. It’s his ghost. Ask anyone in Anastasia. They’ll all tell you the same thing. This house is haunted.”
“Californians,” Shane grumbled, scowling darkly.
“Skeptic,” Faith countered. A man like Shane Callan wouldn’t believe in anything that couldn’t be admitted as evidence in a court of law. She suddenly found the trait oddly endearing and decided she was losing her marbles. “Of course it’s Captain Dugan. He had a peg leg. The other ghosts here don’t make any racket at all.”
Shane’s brows lifted. No one had warned him he would be guarding a crazy woman. “Other ghosts?”
Faith’s look was one of feminine wisdom and mystery. “You don’t believe in ghosts, do you, Mr. Callan?”
Not the kind that haunted houses, he thought. He knew well the ghosts that haunted one’s soul were all too real, but dead sea captains with peg legs were a whole different thing.
He frowned at Faith as he rose from the piano bench, his head swimming as he did so. He ignored the dizziness as he had all day. It was nothing more than fatigue.
Easing his gun from its holster, he said dryly, “I believe in justice, football, and Smith and Wesson. Go to your room, lock your door, and stay put.”
Faith shook her head as she watched him leave. Of all the cops in the world she had to get stuck with Dirty Harry. And darn it, she had a terrible feeling she was falling for him.
FOUR
“THE STRESS IS making you irrational,” Faith muttered to herself as she paced the width of her bedroom. “That’s the only logical explanation. You’re not really falling for Shane Callan.”
Her entire body seemed to reject the statement she’d just made. An ominous sense of certainty descended on her.
She had to admit the physical attraction had been there from the beginning, from the minute she’d opened the front door and looked up into his silver eyes, from the instant she’d first heard his sexy bedroom voice. She hadn’t been able to deny it even when he had all but accused her of treason.
Lust. There wasn’t anything rational or logical about it.
But this was more than mere lust.
Faith’s slim shoulders rose and fell with her sigh of defeat. She couldn’t have picked a more difficult man if she had held auditions for the part. Shane was jaded, sardonic, a loner … he was battered and tired and alone. Just the memory of him sitting at the piano, pouring out feelings he would never have revealed otherwise, brought a pang to Faith’s heart. There were no two ways about it—the darn man needed love.
“But I don’t have to be the one to give it to him,” she declared with a shake of her head, half wishing he’d never apologized to her for suspecting she was in on the DataTech conspiracy.
At least before his apology his suspicion had been an effective barrier between them. Now that wall was gone. Now Faith knew there was a lot more to Shane than what pleasingly met the eye. Now she was in real peril.
She had a wealth of love inside her, stored up from years of being married to a man who had looked on her as nothing more than an asset. But she knew she would have to be a fool to try to give those feelings to a man like Shane.
Shane Callan was a dangerous stranger, there because it was his job to protect her. Their lives would run on the same track only until the DataScam trial. In a matter of weeks Shane would be gone to fight someone else’s battles. To become involved with him would only be asking to have her heart broken.
No, Faith announced inwardly, she wouldn’t make that mistake. She had settled there to rebuild her life, not to tear it apart all over again.
A knock at her door jolted her from her brooding. Alaina stuck