Plot Monkeys

Okay, now we’re getting down to business. I loved yesterday’s chapter because so much happened…but today’s is crucial to the story arc in so many ways. Enjoy!

If you’re just joining us…welcome! The excerpts started on Monday, so if you click here, you’ll be able to start from the beginning and work your way back here for the latest installment. And don’t forget to comment in today’s thread for your chance to win a $20 gift card from Amazon.com!

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“There’s no one here, ma’am.”

Alexa glanced over her shoulder, her lips pursed and her jaw tight as the Coast Guard seaman shifted from one foot to the other, clearly uncomfortable with breaking the news. The discovery wasn’t unexpected. The minute she’d squeezed through a crack in the wall, broken through the sixty-year-old padlock on the front door and witnessed six decades worth of dust and sand on the cracked, stone floors of the castle, Alexa had known no one had been inside.

No one corporeal, at least.

At Jacob’s insistence, she’d allowed the crew of the closest Coast Guard UTB to escort the boat they’d chartered to the island and search for possible trespassers. Now that they’d completed their mission, she wanted them gone. She had exploring of her own to do, starting with the lone furnishing–a painting hanging alone on the landing above the grand staircase.

A painting that had captured her interest as if the man in the portrait had reached out from the canvas and was even now, curling his fingers in a silent, rhythmic beckoning.

She gave the seaman a curt nod and returned her gaze to the portrait. Despite the dust and the cobwebs, the man in the oil on canvas was nothing short of magnificent. Piercing eyes the color of a storm-tossed ocean–a swirling mix of green and gray–stared straight into her. His hair, long and deep chocolate brown, seemed to have caught an unexplainable wind in a drawing room decorated with candle and torchlight. As if wet, his stark white shirt and scarlet waistcoat molded to his skin. A single droplet of water slid down his square jaw, threatening to splash down at any moment.

The artist’s realism stunned her. The plush face of the cat on his lap. The velvety folds of the cloak tossed carelessly across the back of an ornate chair. Even the fired tips of the candles in the sconces blurred as if photographed rather than painted. The fact that the portrait was the only furnishing in the castle further piqued her interest. Had the mysterious builder in the forties reconstruct the abandoned German castle simply to house a single piece of artwork that no one would see?

“Time to go, Alexa,” Jacob announced after the rest of the Coast Guard contingent congregated in the foyer.

“No,” she said.

“What?”

He marched up the stairs. She could hear his loafers crackling across the layer of sand encrusted on the floor.

“I’m not leaving,” she said. “Not just yet.”

“The place is deserted, Alexa. And thanks to our seafaring friends, we know the structure is relatively sound. Let’s get back to the mainland, call in our structural engineers and our designers and –”

She turned and faced her step-brother squarely. “I said no, Jacob. I want some time to look around. I…”

She faltered. She what? Wanted to know if the figure of the man she’d seen in the window had been a figment of her imagination or, as she suspected, a ghost? Could he be the man portrayed in the painting?

Despite the sudden difficulty she had moving her legs, she took a few steps away from the canvas. “I want to get a feel for the place.”

With perfect timing, Jacob’s cell phone trilled loudly, the noise jarring. There was nothing to soften the sound. No carpets. No furniture. No draperies. Even the room upstairs where she’d been so sure she’d seen a man yank a curtain closed just after she spotted him from the helicopter had ended up having an entirely bare window.

While Jacob was distracted with the call, she thanked the Coast Guard seamen for their time. After assuring them that she and her brother would return to the mainland on their chartered boat and would exercise the utmost caution while on the island, they left.

“Finally,” she said.

“Yes, she’s here with me,” Jacob replied to the caller.

He moved to hand the phone to her, but she waved him away, her gaze captured again by the portrait. His nose was as interesting as the rest of him, the nostrils flared ever-so-slightly and his lips, she noticed, were curved almost imperceptibly upward. As if he was on the verge of a sneer.

“I’ll make sure Alexa is accurately informed,” Jacob insisted, his volume increasing.

She stepped farther away from Jacob and closer to the painting. She had no interest in the obvious crisis at the office. The urge to get rid of Jacob, too, and experience the castle while alone overwhelmed her. She raised her hand and realized her fingers were shaking.

Touch him.

Touch me.

“She’s asked me to handle it,” Jacob said.

He laid his hand on her shoulder. Alexa nearly jumped out of her skin.

She caught her breath and acknowledged his assumption with a quick wave.

Jacob walked down the stairs and toward the main entrance, but Alexa’s heartbeat didn’t slow. She removed the backpack she’d filled prior to leaving the marina and double-checked her stash. Bottled water. Energy bars. Dried fruit and nuts. A very large knife. Two emergency flares and a flare gun. A portable GPS finder and her satellite phone.

Enough to keep her safe and sound for a few hours, right?

She glanced up at the painting. Had that tiny sneer eased into a smile?

Below, Jacob’s voice grew increasingly perturbed. She was a CEO of Chandler Enterprises, not an operations manager like him. If she didn’t have the quality staff to handle a problem without her intervention for a few hours, then how could the company remain successful?

She’d just zipped up her backpack when Jacob returned the phone to his waist and marched back up the stairs.

“I lost the signal, but I got an earful. There’s a storm blowing through Boston,” he explained.

“And I control the weather, how?” she asked.

Jacob frowned. “We’re hosting that big convention this weekend.”

She took a few steps closer to the painting. Away from Jacob. Away from the Crown Chandler crisis. Away from her everyday life. Just for a moment. Just for one, brief moment.

“And?” she asked reluctantly. The sooner the situation was explained, the sooner she could order Jacob to handle the solution.

“The hotel lost power.”

“That happens in storms,” she pointed out, even as a dip in the pit of her stomach warned her there was more to the story.

“The hotel is booked to capacity and there isn’t even enough light to run the bar.”

She took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly, tempted to find a stone pillar to hide behind. “What does the city say?”

“They can’t send out crews until the storm passes and this apparently pseudo hurricane isn’t showing any meteorological signs of moving one inch. We need to send in busses and move the guests to other properties in the area or we need to get the generators up and running.”

“Why aren’t they?”

“It’s bad, Alexa.” Jacob said, his mouth drawn in a tight line. “Looks like sabotage.”

Her chest tightened. “Sabotage?”

Jacob leaned in close, his voice hushed as if they were in the office with a half-dozen prying ears rather than in an abandoned castle with only a haunting portrait to intrude on their privacy. “The generators have sustained severe damage. The police have been notified. They don’t want maintenance to touch anything because they’ll be destroying evidence and –”

“Stop!”

He arched a brow.

“Go back to the mainland,” she ordered. “Organize a conference call between all the managers of our properties in the area. We can’t bus the guests anywhere until the storm dies down, but we need transportation in place. At the hotel, move the guests to the grand ballroom, where there aren’t any windows or exterior doors. Have the kitchen break out all the ice cream and desserts we’ll lose anyway and serve it gratis, as well as all the booze they can pour. And then…” her mind swam. God, didn’t she pay her staff huge salaries to handle this type of crisis?

But sabotage? Again?

She leaned back against the wall, the portrait’s frame skimming her shoulder. “Jacob, you know what to do as well as I do. Handle this, okay?”

She closed her eyes. The stone against her back, so cold only moments before, suddenly warmed. The heat eased through the thin layer of her clothes and ignited her skin. She could feel the green-gray eyes of the man in the portrait staring down at her. Into her.

Jacob stepped nearer, his gaze darting with annoyance to the portrait as if the man were intruding on their conversation. “Are you crazy? You want me to leave you here alone?”

Fingers of warmth curled around her shoulders. Alexa allowed her head to drop forward and the sensations smoothed over her neck, then eased down her spine. Yes, she wanted to stay. Yes, she wanted to be here alone.

“Alexa?”

Jacob grabbed her arm and tugged her away from the wall.

“What’s wrong with you?”

Alexa shook her head. Wrong? Nothing was wrong. Was it? She was simply tired. Overwhelmed by her experience earlier in the helicopter and now in the castle.

“Look, you’ll only be gone for a few hours, right? The Coast Guard knows I’m here and I have the portable GPS. I can activate the distress signal if I need to and our friends will come running, I’m sure. And I have my phone.”

“I just lost the signal on mine,” he said, his expression incredulous.

Guard dog.

“A cell, not satellite. And you had the phone working long enough to hear the complicated and business-threatening tales of woe from Boston. If I call you and all you hear is ‘help,’ get here quick, okay? I’ve got water and supplies. Just come get me before dark.”

His eyebrows slanted together at a hard angle. “I can’t just leave you here.”

“Why not?” The farther she walked onto the landing, the more the warmth seeped out of her, the clearer her mind focused on the possibilities of the castle as a Crown Chandler resort property. The stairs would be polished, the cracks repaired. Lush tapestries would keep out the drafts and keep in the cool air that seemed trapped in the stone walls. She’d insist on electric or gas powered torches to provide light and just enough ambience to keep the shadows sufficiently spooky.

This could work.

She just needed time alone to concentrate. To allow the ideas to flow uninterrupted.

She spun and lifted her chin. “Just take care of business on the mainland and let me do my stuff here.”

Jacob made no move to leave.

She stared at him intently.

He groaned. “There’s no arguing with you when your chin tilts up that way.”

She smiled. He was right.

“I’ll be back in two hours, no less,” he promised, jogged down a few steps, then returned, removing a necklace from around his neck. “Wait. Wear this.”

Alexa eyed the offering warily. She wasn’t sure she’d seen Jacob wear this particular trinket before–a gold triangle with a jagged corner, as if ripped off a larger design.

“What’s this?”

“A talisman,” he answered.

She crossed her arms.

He rolled his eyes. “Take the damned thing, Alexa. It’s for luck. I’m betting this charm kept us from falling out of the sky today on that helicopter.”

She shook her head. “I don’t need a good luck charm.”

He thrust the necklace at her. “Take it or I’m not leaving.”

Alexa knew how to assess an opponent. From across a board room table or on the landing of an ancient castle staircase, she could estimate with amazing accuracy when someone would back down and when they would not. Jacob had correctly assessed her stubbornness a moment before. Now, he was the one who wasn’t budging. Which meant the crisis at Crown Chandler would only snowball. Sunlight would slip away. Her chance to roam the castle halls would be lost.

She yanked the necklace out of his hand and while he watched, twisted the chain around her neck.

“There,” she said. “Satisfied?”

After a quick kiss on her cheek, Jacob told her to be careful and left.

Instantly, Alexa turned to the painting. Fingering the triangle now dangling from her neck, she approached the portrait with soft, measured steps. The closer she came, the more intensely her body reacted. Her chest tightened. Sweat curled along the back of her neck. Her breathing shortened. His eyes seemed to rake over her. She jolted when her nipples hardened in response.

Whoa.

She stopped. “Just who are you?” she asked the painting.

Touch me and find out.

She staggered backward, then spun around. The door at the bottom of the stairs remained firmly closed. The voice had been a whisper in her ear, a hot breath along the nape of her neck…and yet, she was alone.

Alexa swallowed hard and turned sharply. She hadn’t come this far to be afraid. She marched to the canvas and balanced her fists on her hips.

“Say again?”

She waited.

Nothing.

“Just when things were getting interesting, you turn shy?” she quipped.

His expression remained stoic, unchanged, but his eyes brimmed with wild fury like thunderclouds rolling over white-capped waves. Even through the layers of grime coating the canvas, masking what she anticipated was a rich depth of color, he intrigued her at the same time that he unnerved her.

She shrugged out of the silk shirt she’d worn over a lacy chemise and approached the canvas.

Hung high, the painting remained mostly out of reach. She stretched on her tip-toes and flicked the shirt at the corners, removing most of the powdery dirt and spider webs that had accumulated on the surface and in the corners of the once gilded frame. With a shiver, she tossed the ruined material to the floor, but admired her handiwork nonetheless.

He was gorgeous. The fire of male strength and power had been captured in his eyes, in the set of his shoulders, in the broad width of his chest. The fabric and detail in the cut of his clothes reflected money. Perhaps, influence. The time period eluded her, but she’d have experts tackle that question. She was more concerned with who he was–and if he was the man she’d seen in the window. Was he the type of man who would defy time, space and perhaps, death?

She closed her eyes and concentrated.

Who are you?

She ran her fingers over the frame. Once again, she felt a surge of warmth. Funny. Ghosts were supposed to announce their presence with cold, weren’t they? Clearly, this was no ordinary spirit.

Or she was taking this fantasy thing way too seriously.

She nearly pulled her hand away when she heard the whispered baritone once again.

Touch me.

She kept her hand steady. “I don’t go around touching strangers,” she countered.

The air around her swirled with heat.

I’m not a stranger. We’ve met before. In a dream. In your fantasy. Touch me and see.

Alexa couldn’t resist. She slid her hand off the frame, then up the portrayal of his waist. She climbed as high as she could on the top of her feet and stretched until her palm settled on the spot where his heart would beat.

Did beat.

Strong.

Hot.

Heat seared her hand and yet, she couldn’t pull away.

The temperature rose. Her skin seemed to melt into the canvas.

She opened her mouth to scream, but darkness dropped over her and pulled her into a vortex. She scratched out, stretched and twisted, fighting to keep from falling…but lost.

For the next chapter, click here.
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