Jordan spun around to see an elderly couple, decked out in rain gear, stepping into the grove. A tiny scream slipped from her lips and she looked down at Danny. He was already leaping to his feet.
He grabbed her hand and they ran for the car, but not before the couple caught sight of them. Jordan slipped once and Danny steadied her before racing on.
“Look, Mildred, I told you we’d see fairies. Didn’t I tell you?”
“Freddie, those are no more fairies than you and I are. Fairies don’t drive around the countryside in a Volvo.”
Laughing, Jordan and Danny jumped in the car and quickly made their escape. As they swerved down the narrow lane, the car spitting up mud as it gained speed, Jordan pressed her hand to her heart, the laughter making her breathless and dizzy.
They’d made love in a warm, soft bed, on the sofa in the library, on the worktable in the kitchen. But it all seemed so ordinary, so controlled, compared to what they’d just done. Never in her life had she completely surrendered to her desires-until now.
“Are we going to drive all the way home stark naked?” Danny asked. “Or would you like to stop and get dressed?”
She glanced over at him. “Oh, let’s have some fun. Forget the clothes.”
“You’re a woman after my own heart, Jordan Kennally. You know that, don’t you?”
“I’M LOSING MY MIND!”
Danny heard Jordan’s shout from the breakfast nook, where he was replacing the hinges on the old wooden door. He frowned, then decided to see what had set her off. No doubt she’d just finished her daily report to her father.
There were times when Danny was ready to hop on a plane, fly across the ocean and beat the shite out of the man who made Jordan’s life so miserable. How hard would it be to convince him to let Jordan go? Right now, it seemed as if her father kept her employed simply to torture her.
Parents were supposed to support their children, not torment them. He’d always taken his parents for granted, but after hearing about Jordan’s dysfunctional family, it was clear that he needed to be much more appreciative of what he had.
Danny found her standing in front of the bookshelves, staring at the neatly arranged shelves of books. She’d spent most of the previous day unpacking the crates and arranging the volumes in the library. But now, she stood in front of her work, shaking her head.
“What is it?” he asked.
“It’s gone,” she said. “It was here yesterday and it’s gone today. I counted out each of these books, matched them up with the packing lists. The Shakespeare plays have thirty-seven volumes. And now there are thirty-six. There’s a spot empty right here, where
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. I’m not imagining this. It was here yesterday and now it’s gone. The set isn’t worth anything if it’s incomplete.” She turned away from the bookcase and began to pace the room. “We have to get rid of these brownies,” she said. “We-we need an exterminator.” She reached for the phone book on her desk. “Like those ghostbuster guys in the movie. You have to have someone in Ireland who takes care of these things.”
“Of course we do,” Danny said. “And they’re all scoundrels and cheats. They’ll take your money, sprinkle a few herbs around the room and laugh all the way to the bank.”
“What am I supposed to do? I didn’t mind it at first, but this set cost five hundred pounds. I’m going to have to replace it.”
“Unless we found the person who stole it.”
“I thought you said brownies stole it.”
He closed the phone book and grabbed her hand, leading her along to the leather sofa. “I don’t believe in brownies any more than you do. We need to figure out how this person-and I do believe it’s a person-is getting into the house. Remember Kellan told us about the secret passage? We need to find it before anything else goes missing.” Danny sat down, then pulled her into his lap, wrapping his arms around her.
“Okay. So how do we do this?”
“We start by checking out the exterior and the cellars. See if we can find any entrances there. They have to come in from the outside in some way. And it can only happen from the exterior walls or the cellar.”
“Contractors have been over every inch of this place,” she said. “The cellars are solid stone so that can’t be it.”
“The pool,” Danny said. “What better place to hide an entrance?”
“No. You’d be able to see an entrance down there. The walls are tiled.”
“Maybe Kellan is wrong,” he murmured.
“No, he has to be right. My question is, who is coming in and why? They really haven’t stolen anything of value. They’re just causing mischief.”
“Maybe it’s a kid,” Danny said, smoothing a strand of hair from her temple. “Before you started working on this house, it was open for years. Maybe one of the kids who hung out here found the secret entrance and is just coming in out of curiosity.”
“That makes sense,” Jordan said.
“We need to let the dogs sleep in the house,” Danny said. “If someone comes in, they’ll bark.”
Jordan thought about his suggestion for a moment. She hadn’t allowed Finny and Mogue into the house since that very first night, when she’d thought someone was in her room. Danny understood her reluctance, considering all the work that had been done on the wooden floors. But the best defense against a troublemaker was a four- legged offense.
“All right. But I’m going to make them wear those little booties that I make the contractors wear.”
“They’re not going to like that,” Danny said. “Besides, they won’t stay on. I’ll trim their nails. They’ll be fine.”
Jordan drew a deep breath. “All right. I feel better. Now that we have a plan, we’re going to figure this out.”
Danny forced a smile. If only the rest of their troubles were so easy to solve.
He wanted to talk about what was going to happen between them when the job was over. He needed to know where he stood. All the guessing was wearing on him and he’d grown sick of trying to interpret every little thing she said to him.
When they were together, intimately entangled, Danny knew there was something there, something much deeper than just lust. When he moved inside her, it wasn’t about his pleasure, it had become all about her, as if the beauty and power of their physical relationship might somehow prove to her they belonged together.
Every day that passed, he saw proof of the end. The painters were gone, the roofers were finished. Books now filled the shelves in the library, utensils and pots and pans hung from the racks in the kitchen, and furniture and rugs would arrive in a few days. After that, the house would be transformed from a construction site to a home and it would all be over.
It was a day that Jordan was anxiously awaiting and one he could only dread. Why was he so afraid to broach the subject with her? Danny suspected that he wasn’t ready to hear her answer.
If she was planning to walk away without a second thought, then he didn’t want to know until the very last moment of their time together. She had bewitched him, and like the other victims of the
“Why don’t we just take a little break?” he suggested, nuzzling her neck. “We could go down and take a swim. Or we could go out and get an early supper.”
“We’re always taking little breaks from work,” Jordan said.
“I don’t mean that kind of break,” he said, referring to their sexual trysts. “Let’s just get out of the house and do something. Take a drive, take a walk. It’s a beautiful autumn day and you’ve been cooped up inside for too long. And I want to spend some time with you. Nothing more.”
