LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

glared at Dalton and led me out of the flowerbed.

      I stomped dirt off my feet and said to Dalton, “I’m going to have to keep an eye on you.”

      “You can put whatever you want on me.”

      The weed eater guy’s dark red lips pursed, and his strong jaw drew taut. He glared at Dalton.

      As if I were the nasty brown stuff dripping from a rusty hole in a dumpster, a clump of gaudy, over-dressed girls close to my age glared at me. As if I were the kind of girl they’d just left with a twenty-dollar bill behind a dumpster, the other guys sneered.

      I shuddered.

      “What happened exactly?” Thomas asked, his face white now.

      “Um, I fell?” Was there a right answer?

      “Well, come along, then. Let’s not give them anything else to whisper about.” Thomas tugged me past the crowd. The yard guy sank into the multitude and out of sight.

      Chapter 2

      I’d never had a headache like that. And I was never that clumsy. Tripping, maybe. Falling completely over, never. I could explain tripping over air if I’d seen the amazingly hot weed eater guy first. The front entrance and reception area had emptied of the audience. Hot weed eater guy was nowhere to be found.

      Thomas pulled me into the reception room and turned to drop his coat in a room behind the door.

      Wagon wheels clattered over the cobblestone drive, horses whinnied, and a driver with a strong deep voice called the horses to a halt. Two horses pulled a buggy up the crowded drive. The man drove right through the rest of the stragglers outside the entrance.

      He drove the wagon over the sidewalk and flower bed, stopped the buggy, and hopped down, the wagon creaking as his weight left the strained wood. He had shoulders so broad the fabric of his shirt stretched against its buttons. He turned and came straight toward me.

      My feet were rooted.

      As if I didn’t exist, the tall, handsome gentleman passed straight through me. In the direction the man had hurried, there was no one.

      “…and the reception room was designed by Ethan Kohler, an architect friend of the original owner.” Thomas hadn’t seen the man, so I had to keep cool.

      We walked through the heavy wooden doors, and to my left a staircase rolled up the wall of the vestibule. Cathedral ceilings soared over my head. The ceilings and staircase were similar in design.

      “…the Sistine Chapel with Greek mythological creatures instead of Biblical symbolism. No detail has been spared. If you look closely, you’ll see that each post in the staircase has a carving depicting a mythological character.”

      As I passed, I let my fingers trail over the eyes of Medusa. Rubies?

      The house was more like a museum, not a dwelling.

      “I especially love the pewter-colored chandelier hanging over our heads.” Thomas pointed. Attached to the center of the cathedral ceiling by a heavy black chain, hundreds of prisms dangled from its jeweled-claw feet. “Four gothic columns set twenty feet apart in a square support the soaring ceiling. Fifteenth or sixteenth century Finnish Tapestries garnish the walls, and reds and blues accentuate the jewels in the staircase.”

      My heels clicked on the polished marble floor. The walls were cool smooth stone. Two large urns filled with ferns marked the entrance to the living room.

      The whole situation was too amazing to be true. Definitely a mistake in identity.

      Behind the left urn, a pair of human eyes peered out, but the ferns arms slapped back together. Children’s giggles burst from the same direction, and my anxiety dipped. Probably the only pleasant family members in the house.

      “This is the living room.” Thomas swept his arm.

      I stepped inside.

      “Ava showcased her priceless stone sculptures and other works of art wall to wall here. To your left, you can probably walk into the tall stone fireplace.”

      It was so big a fire inside it would heat the whole downstairs. Sofas arranged in the shape of a U faced the fireplace.

      A few staff members passed us, nodding politely as they hurried to their tasks.

      “It’s something, huh? And this is just the living room.” Thomas grinned.

      “It looks like a castle.” A cool draft whisked by my feet.

      “You’ll meet the rest of the staff during your stay. They’re probably in hiding right now, trying to stay as far away from Ava’s blood family as possible. It won’t take you long to figure out why Ava left you everything instead of bestowing anything upon one of them,” Thomas said as he took me through the vestibule.

      Good. Maybe my dream guy would be in the lineup.

      Each time we passed a family member, they were unreceptive to any acts of civility, noses turned up as we passed.

      Thomas showed me each wing of the house on the first and second floors, the most important rooms that I would become familiar with if I stayed, Thomas noted.

      We rode a metal elevator with sliding cage doors coated in metal curly cues and flowers.

      He patted the lever that shut the doors. “This old thing saves my knees daily.”

      The elevator screeched and clanked to a stop on the landing of the third floor.

      Thomas gave me its short history, then started the metal box into a downward descent.

      “What about the fourth floor?” I asked.

      “Well, we can go up, but we should stay inside the elevator cage. Bad floors.” He wouldn’t look at me.

      “I’d like very much to see it, if that’s okay?”

      Thomas reluctantly stopped the elevator and reversed directions. Through the bars, he watched the fourth floor as it came into view.

      The elevator groaned and creaked to a stop.

      I started to move toward the doors, but Thomas filled the elevator doorway.

      I gave him a surprised look.

      His voice shook. “We use it for storage mostly. It’s been this way as long as I can remember. Ava started renovations on it until…” He paused. His eyes darkened, and his shoulders sagged with a memory, but he continued. “Until a terrible day in June 1978. A construction worker fell from the window. His body was found on the grounds close to the house. She stopped all renovations that day. It wasn’t the first time something bad had happened here. She grew weary of tragedies linked to the house. But I won’t bore you with a bunch of superstitious legends. Anyway, the staff members aren’t allowed up here without express permission.”

      “I would imagine renovations wouldn’t be that hard.”

      The wallpaper hung in strips down the walls.

      Thomas’s posture straightened to rigidity, and his face paled again.

      I pointed to the window where I’d seen the woman earlier. “You said no one is allowed up here? When we entered the house, I’m beyond positive there was a girl standing in that window.”

      “I have both the keys to the stairwell, and the elevator is rarely used, so seeing anyone there isn’t likely. Maybe you took a harder fall than I thought.” Thomas straightened his tie and cleared his throat. He patted my back, passing off the incident with a nervous chuckle. “Let’s get back downstairs and get you to your room. You might need to rest.”

      “Yes, that does sound good.” My eyelids were heavy.

      “A set of service stairs at the rear of the house allows access to each floor,” he said.

      A long hallway stretched toward a door with

Скачать книгу