Rex automatically walked with her up the path to the front door. He frowned, when he saw the window that she had broken.
"You didn't get that fixed today. You should have."
"I will." She wondered why she had said it so quickly, so defensively. She didn't owe him any explanations.
She managed to open the door on the first try, and that was a nice boost to her ego. She turned and smiled at Rex, laughing. "I did it."
"Yes, you did." he hesitated, wondering if she should invite him in. But then, he didn't want her anywhere near him, and she'd had a miserable night on his account. Still...
She trembled suddenly, looking down. He was a very attractive man. Tall, dark and--masculine. They were far from friends, yet in their first meeting they had taken a forbidden step toward intimacy. She had taken a step...and she wanted to retreat from it. He was rugged and blunt--a loner. They both wanted privacy. "Thank you," she murmured.
"You're welcome," he said, staring at her as she went into the house. "I'll pick up that hose for you tomorrow." "I should make the rental agency do it." "It's no big thing."
She nodded, then realized that she was returning his stare. His eyes were so dark in the night. He was wearing jeans again, and a navy polo shirt. His arms, which were mostly bare, were tanned and nicely muscled.
She wanted to ask him in. Of all the things that had happened the night before, she remembered the tenderness in his voice and the feeling of his arms as he'd held her. Something warm inside her stirred, something she quickly fought.
She wasn't ready for a relationship. She might never be ready again in her life.
She knew he didn't want her here on the peninsula. He had warned her to go--he had even laid odds against her staying. Still, she wanted to see him smile, to hear him laugh. She wanted to know what lay in his past that he would crave this solitude, that could have made him so ruthless when he had first touched her, so gentle when he had realized how terrified she had been.
"Good night, then. Sleep well, Alexi."
"Good night, and thanks again."
Alexi stepped into the house, frowning as she looked around the lighted hallway.
But then, even as she stared, she heard a little noise-- and the house was plunged into total darkness.
She didn't scream at first. Her heart shuddered instinctively, but she wasn't really afraid. The Brandywine house had been built in 1859, there could easily be problems with such things as electricity.
But then she heard the footsteps, loud and clear. They came crashing down the stairway. She could feel the wind.... The stairway was at the other end of the hall, and she was very aware that someone was close--very close-- to her.
And it certainly wasn't Rex Morrow--not tonight. He had just gone out the front door.
She did scream then, just like a banshee. Someone had been upstairs. In the house.
"Alexi!"
There was a fierce pounding on the front door, and she knew the voice shouting her name belonged to Rex.
She turned around, groping madly in the darkness and found the lock. The stubborn thing refused to give at first. Where was the person who had made the sound of footsteps? Her scream had cut off all other sound, and now she didn't know if someone was still coming for her in the darkness or if that same someone had bolted on past.
"Please, please...!" she whispered to the ancient lock, and then, as if it were a cantankerous old man who needed to be politely placated, it groaned and gave.
She threw the door open. In the darkness she could just barely make out Rex Morrow's starkly handsome features. She nearly pitched herself against him, but then she remembered that the man was basically a hostile stranger, even though she knew Gene held him in the highest regard--and even though she had already clung to him once before.
She stepped back.
"Why did you scream?"
"The lights went out and--"
"I thought you were a whiz with electricity."
"I lied--but that's not why I screamed. Someone came running down the stairway." "What?"
He looked at her so sharply that even in the darkness she felt his probing stare. Did he think that she was lying--or did he believe her all too easily? "I told you--" "Come on."
He took her hand, his fingers twining tightly around hers, and, with the ease of a cat in the dark, strode toward the parlor. He found the flashlight and cast its beam around. No intruder was there.
"Where did the...footsteps go?" he whispered huskily. "I--I don't know. I screamed and...I don't know." He brought her back into the hallway and stopped dead. Alexi crashed into his back, banging her nose. She rubbed it, thinking that the man had a nice scent. She remembered it; she would have known him anywhere by it. It was not so much that of an after-shave as that of the simple cleanliness of soap and the sea and the air. He might be hostile, but at least he was clean.
There was only so much one could expect from neighbors, she decided nervously.
He walked through the hall to the stairway, paused, then went into the kitchen. The rear door was still tightly locked. "Well, your intruder didn't leave that way, and he didn't exit by the front door," Rex said. His tone was bland, but she could read his thoughts. He had decided that she was a neurotic who imagined things. "I tell you--" she began irately. "Right. You heard footsteps. We'll check the house." "You think he's still in the house?" "No, but we'll check."
Alexi knew he didn't believe anyone had been there to begin with. "Rex--"
"All right, all right. I said we'll search. If anyone is here, we'll find him. Or her. Or it."
He released her hand. Alexi didn't know how nervous she was until she realized that her fingers were still clinging to his. She flushed and turned away from him.
"Why did the lights go, then?" she demanded.
"Probably a fuse. Here, hold the flashlight and hang on a second."
She turned back around to take the flashlight from him. He went straight to the small drawer by the refrigerator, then went toward the pantry.
"I need more light."
Alexi followed him and let the beam play on the fuse box. A moment later, the kitchen light came on.
He looked at her. "Stay here. I'll check out the library and the ballroom and upstairs."
"Wait a minute!" Alexi protested, shivering.
"What?"
Impatiently he stopped at the kitchen door, his hand resting casually against the frame.
She swallowed and straightened with dignity and tried to walk slowly over to join him.
"I do read your books," she admitted. "And it's always the hapless idiot left alone while the other goes off to search who winds up...winds up with her throat slit!"
"Alexi..." he murmured slowly.
"Don't patronize me!" she commanded him.
He sighed, looked at her for a moment with a certain incredulity and then started to laugh.
"Okay. We'll search together. And I'm sorry. I'm not patronizing you. It's just usually so quiet out here that it's hard to imagine..." His voice trailed away, and he shrugged again. "Come on, then."
Smiling, he offered her his hand. She hesitated, then took it. They returned to the hallway. Alexi nervously played the flashlight beam up the stairway. Rex grinned again and went to the wall, flicking a switch that lit the entire stairway. - "Gene did have a few things done," he told her.
There were only two other rooms on the ground floor-- except for the little powder room beneath the stairway, which proved to be empty. To the right, behind the parlor, was the library, filled with ancient volumes and wall shelves and even an old running oak ladder reaching to the top shelves. Upon a dais with a wonderful old Persian carpet was a massive desk with a few overstuffed Eastleg chairs around it. Apart from that, the room was empty.
They crossed behind the stairway to the last room--the “ballroom,'' as Rex called it. It was big, with a dining set at one end with beautiful old hutches flanking it, and a baby grand across the room, toward the rear wall. Two huge paintings hung above the fireplace, one of a handsome blond man in full Confederate dress uniform, the other of a lovely woman in radiant white antebellum costume.