A Haunting Obsession

When the key turned with surprising ease, she was reminded that till recently this house had been lived in. Just because it looked as if it had been standing there forlorn and unused for years and years, it didn’t mean it was so. Bonnie swung open the door, determined not to allow herself to be besieged by any further fanciful thoughts.

Her first impression was one of darkness and mustiness, but once she’d snapped on the light the hallway was bathed in a soft warm glow, making the worn strip of patterned carpet quite welcoming. The sense of cosiness increased as she ventured further inside, and it was with an air of expectation—but no eeriness—that Bonnie continued on through the house.

The first door leading off the hallway to the left revealed a formal sitting-room, or parlour, as it was once called. None of the furniture qualified as valuable antiques, Bonnie observed, but it was all rather quaint. She wandered through the room, running a gentle hand over the backs of the chintz-covered armchairs and ignoring the cobwebs in the corners.

A pair of louvred doors led into what could only be described as a morning-room or sun-room. It was surprisingly light, with a large window and pale polished floors. An old roll-top desk stood against one wall, a battered oak sideboard against another. The sun was streaming on to a round wooden table under the window and it occurred to Bonnie that to breakfast in such a room would be a marvellous start to the day.

She moved on, opening the only exit door to find herself in a long rectangular kitchen which was a real horror. An ancient electric stove was the only reasonably modern appliance in sight. There wasn’t even a refrigerator. Lord knew how that poor old woman had managed without one.

The kitchen led into a dining-room on the other side of the house, which, in turn, was connected through another pair of louvred doors to a library-cum-study This was a most attractive room, despite its carpet being threadbare, the velvet curtains mouldy, the leather chairs worn, and the bookshelves more full of dust than books.

The whole place had potential, she decided as she climbed the rather narrow staircase. And charm. She liked it. Surely someone else would like it too?

Upstairs, the main bedroom ran the entire length of the left side of the house. But it was empty except for a large brass bed covered in a hand-crocheted cream quilt. Clearly old Mrs McClelland hadn’t used the main bedroom, despite its not smelling musty in there at all. It did, in fact, carry a faint whiff of lavender. She went over and sniffed at the pillows. Yes... lavender.

The bathroom that came off the landing at the top of the stairs was as antiquated as the kitchen. Bonnie shook her head at the chipped enamel bath on legs, and the tiny washbasin with its plug on a chain. The separate toilet had a chain for flushing as well. This brought a smile till she remembered these were the very things that would make the house difficult to sell.

Only two rooms were left upstairs, both coming off a narrow L-shaped gallery on the right side of the stairwell.

For some unaccountable reason Bonnie walked past the nearest to open the other.

It was clearly the room the old lady had slept in, despite the lack of personal effects. The furniture was dark and heavy, the rug alongside the single bed worthy of being on the endangered species list, the patchwork quilt having seen better days. The whole room was depressing, she thought, and quickly shut the door.

Which left only one room to inspect. Bonnie walked swiftly back along the narrow hallway, wanting suddenly to be done with the house, yet when her hand reached to turn this last remaining knob she hesitated. An odd nervousness claimed her and she almost turned and walked away. Then something—some force much stronger than fear—impelled her wrist to turn.

After she let the knob go, the door seemed to open by itself, creaking slowly wide. With her heart in her mouth, Bonnie took a tremulous step inside, scooping in a startled breath as her eyes travelled around the room. The tentacles of some indefinable emotion wrapped themselves around her heart and squeezed tight, bringing with it an incredible wave of sadness.

It was a nursery.

Heavy legs carried her further into the room, shaking fingers creeping out to touch the white cradle, swinging it back and forth, back and forth. Her stomach twisted as she gazed at the purity of the snow-white sheets, the delicacy of the pink and white motifs sewn on to the pillow-case. She wanted to cry when she picked up the handmade toys, crafted with such love and attention to detail. And when she opened the baby-record book on top of the chest of drawers, the sudden constriction in her chest only reinforced what she already knew.

It was empty.

Not a word had been entered in that sad, sad testament. One glance had told Bonnie that this nursery had never been occupied. There were no chips on the white furniture, no marks on the wallpaper, no tell-tale damage to the toys.

Sympathy swelled her heart as she thought of old Mrs McClelland. What unfulfilled dreams lay in this room? What heartache?

Her eyes brimmed with sudden tears. Hastily she blinked them away and moved towards the large bay window that gave a perfect view of the ocean. The sun was quite hot through the glass and she flicked open the buttons of her jacket as she stood there, drinking in the view and willing herself to think happier thoughts.

But nothing could distract her from an overwhelming feeling of grief. Finally, her eyes dropped away, and she found herself peering down at the old-fashioned window-seat and the definite hollow in the padded seat.

Realisation jerked her back upright. Good God, she thought shakily. This was where the old lady used to sit and the impression of her body still lingered. How many hours had that poor woman spent here? How many times had she been drawn to this spot?

Something strangely compelling pulled Bonnie down till she was also sitting there, her back against the wooden window-frame, her green eyes glazing as they travelled along the same path those weary old eyes had travelled... into the past.

Only this time the past was Bonnie’s...

Keith had been getting ready for work that final day, buttoning up his policeman’s uniform, looking as handsome and dashing as ever. She’d watched him from where she lay, huddled up under the sheets, still not able to believe what had happened the night before.

It wasn’t that Keith had never hit her before. He had. But only with his hand, and never more than once, or twice.

But last night...

Oh, God, she could hardly bear to remember. The pain had been excruciating. It was still excruciating.

When he came over and sat down on the side of the bed, she couldn’t help cringing away from him.

‘Don’t be like that, Bonnie,’ he reproached. ‘It wasn’t my fault, you know. You made me lose my temper. Why didn’t you just tell me where you went yesterday in the first place? I knew you weren’t shopping. There were too many miles on the speedometer. You should have admitted you’d driven up to Morriset to visit your sister in the first place. I don’t mind you visiting Louise, as long as you ask permission first. If you’d done that, there would have been no reason for you to lie, and no reason for me to punish you for it.’

Bonnie stared at him, her head dizzy with fear.

‘Promise me you’ll ask permission next time,’ he said, cupping her chin and squeezing tight.

Her heart began to thud.

‘I want to hear you say it, Bonnie,’ he snarled. ‘Say, I promise I will ask permission next time.’

‘I... I promise I’ll ask permission next time,’ she choked out, her throat dry, her tongue thick.

‘Good girl.’

When he lowered his mouth to give her an obscenely deep kiss, his hands slipping under the sheets to play with her breasts at the same time, she was almost sick. When his mouth lifted and he began pinching one of her nipples, watching coldly while the pain registered in her eyes, she wanted to kill him.

‘Just a little reminder of what you can expect if you lie to me again,’ he warned before standing up abruptly and striding from the room. ‘Make sure you’re here when I get home,’ he called back over his shoulder.

She would never know if she would have been home at the end of that day, because Keith never came home. He was killed that morning, during a car chase, at an intersection. One of his colleagues called at the house soon afterwards to give her the bad news. He thought her tears were tears of grief, but he was wrong. They were tears of relief.

CHAPTER THREE

JORDAN studied the rough map that the chap at Coastal Properties had given him before gunning the engine of his car and driving off in search of the increasingly enigmatic Mrs Merrick.

His disappointment when he’d found out she wasn’t in the office had been sharp. But his unexpectedly early arrival had drawn some interesting information which he might not otherwise have gleaned about the woman.

Her dashing young colleague had not hidden his contempt for her business ethics, suggesting with a smirk that Jordan was a very lucky man to have someone like Mrs Merrick ‘handle’ him. Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more.

The various implications would have been clear to a brain-dead moron. A queen’s counsel certainly did not need to have it beaten into his head with a hammer.

Mrs Merrick, in her workmate’s opinion, was obviously not above using her physical assets when trying to make a sale. Jordan wasn’t sure if he was repelled or excited by that thought. It would seem likely that the lady must have some special assets worth trading on if she did business that way. In his experience, females with lax morals were pretty well always easy on the eye.

Yet tramps had never held any fascination for him. And he’d come across a good few in his thirty-six years.

If she was a tramp, that was. He’d found that people eager to offer unsought-after information about others were often lying. Or at least exaggerating. He resolved to keep an open mind on the subject of Mrs Merrick’s morals.

It took him a good ten minutes to find the dirt road, having driven right past it the first time. His patience was wearing thin by the time he made it down the rough track and up to what must have been the weirdest, ugliest old house he had ever seen. Parking next to a green Falcon, he climbed out, did up his suit jacket and dragged in a deep breath.

The moment of truth had come...

Bonnie sighed softly as she sat on in that room of dreams, mindless of time passing. It was as if she had entered another world where time stood still, where people could rest a while before picking up the strands of their lives again.

What first roused her from her trance-like state? Was it a sound, or the draught that suddenly chilled her legs? She stiffened in the window-seat, her eyelids fluttering nervously as they became fixed on the open doorway. Her ears strained to catch any more sounds but instantly all was very, very quiet.

Then she heard them. Unmistakable footsteps on the stairs, coming closer...closer...each soft thud a warning for her to move, to get up, to investigate. Her eyes grew wider as the footsteps reached the top of the stairs, turned, then moved inexorably towards the nursery. Her heart began hammering wildly against her chest.

When a tall, dark figure loomed into the dimly lit rectangle that was the doorway, even her breathing ceased. All she could do was stare, her eyes round, her lips parted. Common sense told her this was not some ghost, come to haunt her. But her mind was too far from reality to grasp that fact sufficiently, to act upon it. And so she sat frozen on that window-seat, struggling to get some breath back into her stunned body.

Jordan could do nothing but stare, every muscle within his body having gone rigid with shock.

Dear God...

He’d expected a beauty of some sort, especially after his encounter with that chap from the office. But his mental picture of Mrs Merrick had shifted from a classy, sleek-haired brunette to a cheap, brassy blond. He certainly hadn’t been expecting an angel.

Yet that was exactly what she looked like sitting there in the sunlight... a gloriously golden angel. His breath caught in his throat as she lifted her chin slightly, and the rays of the sun caused a halo effect behind her head.

He took a startled step forward, a shift in the light allowing him to focus on the details of her face. Once again, he had to smother a gasp of shock. For there was nothing angelic about that face.

Oh, it was lovely all right. Exquisitely so. But there was something about those widely spaced green eyes and sinfully lush mouth which made one think of hell, not heaven, sin, not virtue, temptation, not restraint.

Suddenly, he wanted to pull her to her feet, drag her into his arms and bury his face into everything she was...and promised to be...from her hair to her breasts to her...

When the stranger took an abrupt step forward and his facial features broke into the light, Bonnie drew in a sharp breath.

Dear heaven, she thought shakily. She had come across a couple of exceptionally good-looking men in her life—her husband had been one of them—but this was something else. This man gave tall, dark and handsome new meaning.

But it wasn’t just his looks that held her momentarily captive. There was an intensity about him, especially in those deeply set dark eyes which were at that moment locked on her own. She could not stop staring at him. Neither could she find her voice. The seconds ticked away and the room started to swim around her. She tried to break her eyes away, but could not seem to find the strength, or will-power.

‘Mrs Merrick from Coastal Properties, I presume,’ the object of her staring said at last in a strangely cold voice.

It was enough to snap Bonnie out of herself, though not with as much instant composure as she would have liked.

‘Yes...yes...that’s right...that’s me,’ she said, slipping from the window-seat on to slightly numb feet. When a long golden curl came loose to fall across her right eye, she quickly looped it back behind her ear and drew in a deep, steadying breath.

‘And who might you be?’ she returned, hoping she sounded a darn sight calmer than she felt. Her rattled brain struggled to find the identity of this man who not only knew her name and place of employment, but who felt he had the right to walk into this house uninvited and unannounced.

Inspiration struck in a rush. ‘Oh, of course!’ she exclaimed ‘You must be Mrs McClelland’s nephew.’

The handsome stranger made no attempt to confirm this guess, or to come further forward. He slid his hands into the trouser pockets of his navy pin-striped suit and proceeded to survey her with unnerving attention to detail, his eyes sweeping slowly down her body, lingering on where her cream jacket was lying open at the front.

Bonnie’s chest tightened with dismay. It took all of her self-control not to grab the lapels of her jacket and hold the garment defensively closed across her chest.

For she wasn’t wearing a bra.

Frankly, she never wore one if she was wearing a suit with a lined jacket, simply because she looked less busty without one. Since she normally never undid her jacket at work, no one ever noticed. All she had to remember to do was not walk too fast. And what woman did that in high heels?

When the man’s gaze remained cool, not lascivious in any way, Bonnie felt some relief. But not enough for her to relax totally.

‘No, I am not Mrs McClelland’s nephew,’ the stranger informed her in an upper-crust accent. ‘I’m Jordan Vine-Hall. Your office directed me here. I did call out to you downstairs but you didn’t answer.’

Bonnie’s heart sank. Oh, God. Mr Moneybags himself! And she hadn’t been at the office to meet him.

Any dismay was quickly overridden by a surge of the same irritation he’d engendered in her during their earlier phone call. What right had he to drive up here so darned quickly? And why couldn’t he have been fat and bald? Why did he have to be the most impressive-looking man in the Southern hemisphere, maybe even the whole world? Lord, Daphne would have a field day when she got back to the office!

‘You shouldn’t have come out all this way, Mr Vine-Hall,’ she said extra-coolly in an attempt to hide her inner fluster. ‘I would have been back at the office by twelve.’

‘It’s just on twelve now, Mrs Merrick.’

A quick glance at her wristwatch brought a gasp of shock. ‘Good heavens, so it is! I... I lost track of time. I’m so sorry, Mr Vine-Hall. I don’t know what to say.’ Bonnie hated having to grovel, but she could see that a little grovelling was called for.

‘No need to apologise,’ he drawled. ‘As I said, I was early.’

‘I hope you didn’t have too much trouble finding me.’

‘I had good directions. Your—er—friend was most helpful.’

‘Oh, what friend was that?’

‘I think his name was Neil.’

The memory of the morning’s encounter with Neil swept back in and Bonnie grimaced. Whatever was she going to do about him? Should she tell Edgar or try to brazen the situation out?

‘Something wrong, Mrs Merrick?’

Bonnie was jerked back to the present. ‘No, no, I was just wondering where to take you first. I suppose you wouldn’t be interested in this place, would you?’

His face told it all.

‘I didn’t think so,’ she muttered drily. ‘Would you—um—mind waiting outside while I lock up?’

He glared at her for a second, then spun round and stalked off, leaving Bonnie with the impression of extreme irritation.

Her sigh carried a weary acceptance that the week might not start with an easy sale after all. Still, she supposed he had some right to be annoyed, coming all this way from Sydney then having to traipse out here after her, when he’d probably expected her to be there at the office, ready and waiting to dance attention on him. Wealthy men liked a lot of attention, she’d found.

Bonnie touched a slightly shaking hand to her head and glanced around the nursery. It was this room’s fault, she decided. She hadn’t wanted to come in here. She should have listened to her intuition. She should certainly have never sat down in that window-seat. Somehow, by doing so, the old woman’s pain had become her pain, filling Bonnie’s soul with a nameless yearning. It filled her now, yet remained tantalisingly out of reach.

What was it the old woman wanted her to do?

Bonnie shook her head. She was being fanciful again, the so-called haunted atmosphere getting to her. She didn’t believe in ghosts. She didn’t believe in haunted houses, or hidden messages from beyond. Her job here was to find a buyer for this place, not surrender to vague, highly emotional impulses.

Resisting the urge to give the room one last look, Bonnie closed the door and started down the stairs, doing up her jacket as she went. This time, she tried to see the house more as Mr Vine-Hall had and not through sentimental, rose-coloured spectacles.

It was a hideous old place. Run-down. Musty. Poky.

By the time she reached the bottom of the stairs, Bonnie felt oddly depressed.

But depressed salespeople rarely sold houses, so she made a conscious effort to brighten up before stepping outside, plastering a cheery smile on her face.

She needn’t have bothered, since her cantankerous client was standing on the veranda with his back to her. Every line in his body spelt impatience and tension, from the rigid set of his shoulders to the wide, feet-apart stance. She suspected he was a man who never relaxed, who lived life at too fast a pace. She wondered, for the second time, what he did for a living, and resolved to find out as soon as she could.

‘All set,’ she said brightly on joining him at the edge of the veranda.

He turned slowly towards her and once again she was struck by his looks, though up close and on second inspection he was not as conventionally handsome as she had first thought. His face was long and lean, his nose sharp, his mouth stern. It was a rather harsh, ascetic face, softened only by the wave of dark hair across his high forehead, and dominated by a pair of deep-set black eyes which drew one’s own eyes to them like a magnet. They had held her, transfixed, up in the nursery. They were holding her now, his gaze piercing, as though he was trying to see right into her very soul.

And what he was seeing was not to his liking.

Or was he always like this? she puzzled. Austere, grim, and coldly disapproving?

‘Shall we be using both cars?’ he asked curtly.

She noted the sleek bronze sedan parked on the other side of her Falcon. ‘I think we should go in mine,’ she said sensibly. ‘Otherwise we’ll waste valuable time.’

‘And my car?’ he asked, his left eyebrow arching sardonically skywards.

‘It will be quite safe here,’ she assured him, smothering any annoyance. The man definitely had an attitude problem. But she’d dealt with difficult clients before and prided herself on usually being able to bring them round. ‘I’ll lock the gates on the way out,’ she told him, and drummed up a placating smile.

No luck. All it produced was a half-sneer, as though her smile had been a long-awaited mistake.

‘But will I be safe, Mrs Merrick?’ he muttered.

‘Pardon?’

Her bewilderment at this cryptic comment seemed to surprise him.

‘I usually prefer to drive,’ he stated brusquely. ‘Do you drive competently, Mrs Merrick?’

‘I am a very competent driver,’ she snapped, giving in finally to irritation.

‘Yes, I’m sure you are,’ he said with an odd hint of scorn still in his voice. ‘I’m sure you’re very competent at everything you do. Shall we go?’ And he strode off down the steps in the direction of the cars, leaving a totally thrown Bonnie behind.

She glared after him, wondering what on earth she had done to get so far on his wrong side. Surely, if he’d been really annoyed by her not being at the office when he arrived, he could have demanded that someone else show him around?

Bonnie found it very frustrating to be on the end of such disfavour, particularly when she didn’t think it justified. All she could imagine was that Mr Vine-Hall was even more of a chauvinist than he’d displayed during his phone call this morning. There was no doubting his displeasure at having to deal with a woman. Any woman. Perhaps he considered doing business with such a young one the living end!

That had to be it, she supposed, though a niggling little something kept telling her there was more to this situation than met the eye. But what?

Shaking her head, she trailed after the man, thinking to herself that this was the worst Monday she had encountered in a long, long time. What else could go wrong?

Mr Vine-Hall was stretched out in the passenger seat by the time she slid behind the wheel, her automatic sidewards glance meeting a wary, sour-puss expression. Those unnerving black eyes flicked over her once more, and what he saw still didn’t seem to meet with his approval.

‘So where are we off to first, Mrs Merrick?’ he asked, that dry note still in his voice.

Bonnie suppressed a sigh and decided to give good manners and pleasantries one last try. ‘Perhaps you’d better call me Bonnie,’ she began with dogged optimism. ‘Not many people call me Mrs Merrick.’

‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘I don’t imagine they do.’

Once again, Bonnie was taken aback. What on earth was going on here?

But then suddenly he smiled, and she was quite blown away. Not only by the change in his face—from churlish to charming in one second flat—but by the involuntary leap in her heart.

‘In that case you must call me Jordan,’ he returned smoothly. ‘Yes, I think first names are definitely called for, since I have a feeling we’re going to be spending quite some time together. I’m a very difficult man to please, you see, Bonnie. You’re going to have to earn every cent of your commission with me.’