Lover Mine (Black Dagger Brotherhood #8)(87)

"Stay here?" she asked as she shifted her manicured toes under the sheets.

"You sure?"

Her smile as she put her head down on the pillow revealed her perfect caps . . . and the sweet side of her personality. "Yes. I'll sleep better, plus you smell nice after your shower."

Man, she had some kind of way about her: With her looking up from

his bed like that, it would have taken an army to drag him out of the room.

"Okay. Go to sleep, Lolli."

She smiled at the pet name he'd given her after he'd first started

sleeping with her. "I will. And thank you for staying with me."

As she closed her eyes, he went over to the wing chair by the window

and fired up his laptop.

The feeds from the tiny cameras they'd hidden out in the hall and

downstairs in the living room and outside in the big oak next to the porch had indeed uploaded.

Given what had happened, he wished like hell they'd put a remote in

Holly's room, but that was the thing. As ghosts didn't actually exist, why would they have bothered? The shots had been taken just for selling the atmosphere of the place . . . and for doctoring up later when it came time to "call forth the spirits of the house."

As he started to look through the images that had been captured, he

realized he'd been doing this for how long? Two years? And he had yet to actually see anything or hear anything that couldn't be explained.

Which was fine. He wasn't trying to prove the existence of spirits. He was out to sell entertainment.

The only thing he'd learned in the past twenty-four months was that it was a good job lying had never been a problem for him. Matter of fact, his total comfort with falsity was why he was a perfect television producer: It was all about the goal for him and the particulars, whether they were locations, talent, agents, home owners or whatever was on film or tape, were nothing but soup cans in a cupboard to be positioned at his will. To get the job done, he'd lied about contracts and dates and times and images and sounds. He'd fudged and misled and threatened with fallacies.

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J. R.Ward

He'd manufactured and cued up and--

Gregg frowned and leaned into the screen.

Moving the cursor to the rewind button on the Windows Media

Player, he replayed the segment that had been recorded in the hallway.

What he saw was a dark shape moving along the corridor outside their

bedrooms and . . . disappearing into Holly's. The time on the lower right-hand corner: 12:11 a.m.

Which was just about forty-five minutes before she came to him.

Gregg replayed the segment, watching that huge shadow walk down

the center of the dimly lit hallway, blocking the illumination that came in through the window at the far end.

In his mind, he heard Holly's voice: Because I had sex with him.

Anger and anxiety swirling in his head, he let the recording play on, the minutes ticking by in that right-hand corner. And then there it was, someone leaving Holly's room, stepping out, blocking the light, about thirty minutes later.

The figure headed off the opposite way it came almost as if it knew

where the camera had been mounted and didn't want to show its face.

Just as Gregg was getting ready to call the local police . . . the damn thing disappeared into thin air.

What. The. Fuck.

227





J. R.Ward

THIRTY-TWO

John Matthew came awake, sensed Xhex beside him, and panicked.

Dream . . . was this a dream?

He sat up slowly, and when he felt her arm slip down his chest to his belly, he caught it before it hit his hips. God, what he held with care was warm and weighted and . . .

"John?" she said into a pillow.

Without thinking, he curled around her and smoothed her short hair.

The instant he did, she seemed to fall right back to sleep.

A quick look at his watch told him it was four in the afternoon. They'd slept for hours, and if the growl in his stomach was anything to go by, she must be starving as well.

When he was sure she was out like a light again, he slipped free of her hold, and moved around quietly, writing her a quick note before drawing on his leathers and T-shirt.

In his bare feet, he padded out into the hall. Everything was quiet

because there was no training here anymore, and that was a damn shame.

There should have been shouts of sparring from the gym and the drone of lectures in the classroom and the slam of lockers being shut in the showers.

Instead, silence.

But he and Xhex weren't alone, as it turned out.

When he got to the office's glass door, he froze with his hand on the pull.

Tohr was asleep at the desk . . . well, on it. His head was down on his forearm and his shoulders were slumped.

John was so used to feeling anger toward the guy, it was a shock to

have nothing of the sort light him up. Instead . . . he felt a crushing sadness.

He'd woken up next to Xhex this morning.

But Tohr was never, ever getting that again. He was never going to

roll over and smooth Wellsie's hair. He was never going to go to the kitchen to bring her something to eat. He was never going to hug her or kiss her.

And he'd lost a baby along the way.

John opened the door and expected the Brother to snap up, but Tohr