Behind her stood a naked man, streaming blood from a hideous pattern of stab wounds in his chest. Though he was losing quantities of blood, he showed no inclination to collapse. His opalescent blue eyes were fierce with determination, the eyes of a man who refused to die no matter how ghastly his injuries. Before Janis had any opportunity to break her paralysis, the stab wounds--she was sure they were fatal stab wounds--faded before her eyes until there wasn't a mark on his body.
Those blue eyes gleamed in the intruder's lean, tanned face. His thatch of blond hair glittered in the light from the chandelier, but she particularly--and inanely--noted his eyebrows, sideburns and body hair, dark with golden highlights in a masculine pattern of triangles that could awaken the libido of a stone.
She had no control over filling her eyes with all of him, even with the sight of herself in the mirror, practically enveloped by him, her face unnaturally pale, her eyes darkened by shock.
His glowing blue eyes on hers in the mirror, he reached to grasp her left wrist. She knew that touch instantly from when she had been at the piano across the hall. This time, his grip was warm, but still demanding attention.
More adrenaline coursed through her, preparing her for flight or fight. She whirled and slammed her Italian leather briefcase ... into thin air.
Her defense stopped her in mid-action, facing the dining room table. No one had stood behind her--she was quite alone in the room, lunging at nothing!
But the strong, warm fingers still gripped and twisted at her left wrist, and the coiling heat which had somehow overjoyed her was replaced by utter terror.
I don't believe this. I won't believe this.
If she wasn't hallucinating, she faced instant changes in the way she looked at life, heaven, hell, eternity--Halloween!
)
Romance blooms for Janis Carter when rakish ex-Civil War Major Benjamin Blair materializes at a seance in order to prevent her murder. The Major doesn't believe in love, and Janis not only doesn't believe in ghosts, she is prim, proper, and appalled at the Major's womanizing ways. Ben cannot rest until the last descendant of his own murderer--the same killer stalking Janis--is in his grave. But f Ben prevents her murder, he disappears from her life forever. If Janis is the murderer's victim, Ben is cursed to remain tied to the Heritage Home compound and never see his Ms. Demure again.
