she said quickly.
When they reached the front door, the force of the storm was evident again through the windowpane. A quickening wind swept down the street and a fresh onslaught of rain beat against the windows.
“It’s raining harder than before,” Della said.
Colin looked out the door and nodded. Then he unexpectedly reached over and took her hand. His touch was surprisingly gentle and warm, and at the same time firm and engulfing. A spiral of heat radiated through her at the contact.
“I didn’t mean to involve you,” he said quietly. “I wasn’t thinking…or I wouldn’t have come.”
“It’s all right. I’m sorry I was so insensitive about the tunnel. I didn’t know anything about Shawn Delaney.”
His hand tightened on hers and his body grew rigid. “My mother always said she couldn’t tell our pictures apart…that I was his evil soul incarnate.”
Della was horrified. “When did she tell you that?”
“The day before she killed herself.”
He dropped her hand and turned swiftly toward the door. He jerked it open, and bent his head against the attack of wind and rain. The next minute he was gone, swallowed up in sheets of gray rain.
Della locked the door behind him and hugged herself as she stared out into the watery bedlam. Her thoughts reeled. What had Colin done to make his mother treat her son so horribly?
He radiated a hot, compelling passion that she feared could be devastating if he chose to unleash it upon a woman. Fervent, driven, obsessed, he attracted her on levels that went beyond common sense. She knew she was in danger of giving way to a physical, emotional and sexual attraction that could make her a stranger to herself. If she had any sense, she would keep a wide distance between herself and the handsome, brooding Colin Delaney.
She turned away from the front door and had taken only a few steps when she stopped short.
“What—”
She jerked her eyes upward. A high chandelier began to glow above her. The shadowy darkness disappeared before her startled gaze. She looked around the lobby in disbelief. A second earlier, the hotel had been dark and empty. Now the glitter of brass and dark red Victorian furnishings assaulted her vision.
Two young women stood at the bottom of the carpeted stairs. Dressed in low-cut satin gowns with draped bustles and ruffled swags, the painted ladies boldly lifted their satin skirts to mount the stairs. The harlots tossed their feathered, high-piled hair and disappeared into the shadows of the second-floor landing.
Della stared after them, unable to move. I’m hallucinating. I have to be!
Chapter 2
D ella’s breath was short and her heartbeat rapid. She was frightened and yet curious. She’d never closed her mind to new experiences and even as a warning went off in her head, she moved slowly to the bottom of the stairs. Putting a shaky hand on the newel post, she stared up the old staircase. There was no sign of the ghostly figures that had been there a moment before. Cautiously, she mounted one step, then another until she reached the first landing. After turning on a wall light, she looked down the hall in both directions.
Empty. Workmen’s clutter was everywhere—lumber, sawhorses, boxes, sacks of plaster, cans of paint. Everywhere was the same mess she’d left earlier in the day.
She walked to the steps leading to the third floor and stared upward. She couldn’t hear anything in the echoing darkness except the clatter of rain upon the roof. She swallowed a hard lump in her throat. The hotel was as it had always been.
She turned around and slowly went downstairs to the lobby. A wash of relief swept over her when she saw it was again in shadow, except for the night-light at the hotel entrance. The old chandelier was once again lost in the darkness of the vaulted ceiling. Everything was exactly as it had been before the weird impression of light and ghostly women.
Della’s forehead beaded with nervous sweat as she looked around the lobby and up the empty staircase. How could her senses have fooled her so completely? She brushed a hand across her eyes and suddenly a swish of cold air hit her face, blowing her blond hair back from her face.
She cried out and turned to flee. For an instant, she saw the silhouette of a man reflected in the windowpane. Colin? In the next instant, the impression was gone. A bleak light from a streetlamp illuminated the deserted street outside.
She fled down the hall to her apartment. Her fingers trembled as she shut the door on the rest of the unoccupied hotel and leaned against it. Her heart hammered in her chest. Her breath caught. Her eyes went to the wing chair, which still held the impression of Colin’s body. Could his obsession with the past have affected her more than she realized. Yes, that must be it. His emotional reaction to the discovery of the tunnel and his talk about Shawn Delaney’s murder must have planted subliminal images in her mind. He had made the hotel’s past come alive and she had momentarily lost touch with reality.
Angry with him and herself, she was tempted to call him and tell him what had happened. The impulse died quickly. She knew she wouldn’t tell him. She wouldn’t tell anybody. The whole thing was too bizarre.
She was tired. The problems of renovating the hotel were getting to her, and Colin’s visit had unsettled her. She wasn’t sure how she felt about him. He fascinated her, in a strange way. When he held her hand, she felt drawn to him in a way that mocked her usual cool demeanor toward attractive men. And when he’d talked about his mother, she’d been jolted by the force of raw emotion emanating from him. The hatred in his eyes when he’d talked about his great-grandfather had been so intense that even now she felt herself recoil from it. Surely he didn’t believe anyone who had been dead over a hundred years could be responsible for tainting the heredity of all the Delaney men?
As she prepared for bed, Della was determined not to think about the odd experience in the lobby. Her vivid imagination had played a trick on her, that was all.
A few minutes later, on the edge of sleep, the vision came back so sharply and clearly, she could have described the old-fashioned gowns in detail: velvet green and red satin peplum overskirts pulled back into ruffled bustles that trailed down to the floor; low-cut necklines edged in silk flowers and gathered ecru lace; scalloped streamers and velvet-ribbon bows dotting full skirts and puffed sleeves. Even the lace gloves and glittering fans were clear in her memory. I must have seen an old picture like that at some time, she told herself. That was the only explanation that made sense.
The next couple of days were hectic and Della had little time or energy to think about anything but the renovation of the hotel. She solved one crisis only to be faced with another. The work proceeded at a snail’s pace and the estimates of time and money were way off. She raised hell with the construction foreman and then called her banker who confirmed what she feared—her cash flow was edging toward the danger point.
“You better get those cost overruns under control,” he told her.
She checked every invoice to make sure she wasn’t being ripped off. Her investment was turning into a fiasco and confidence in her business judgment was waning. Della let the phone ring three times before she grabbed it impatiently and barked, “Hello.”
“No need to ask you how your day’s going,” Colin said in his deep resonant voice. “You sound
