Page 604 of Flirting with Darkness

The emotion he saw there completely threw him.

The knowing and affection and understanding, and… God… thelovehe saw in her eyes as she looked at him. She loved him. She knew him. There was history there, in that look. Pain. Understanding. Shared grief and fear and hardship. His complete clarity in seeing all of those things in her hit at something deep inside him, some core of his heart or soul that hadn’t been touched in longer than he could remember.

Maybe not ever.

Maybe nothing had ever reached that far into him, not in this life.

The strange, hauntingly beautiful woman brushed the hair out of his face with tender fingers. He felt her touch through his whole body, intensely enough to harden his jaw.

God Almighty.

Maybe he didn’t have to tell her just yet.

Maybe he could play at being this woman’s husband, if only for a little while.

The thought made his cock hurt so badly he bit his lip.

She must have seen something in that look, because her smile widened.

16

OFF BALANCE

“Well, we can’t take you out on the streets like that,” she remarked, looking him over in the black wool suit. “If nothing else, you’ll sweat off half your weight… it’s hotter than hell here right now, or had you forgotten? We’re still in that crazy-hot summer you left behind when you took off for this job on Sunday.”

Ghost nodded to her words.

He didn’t speak.

He still hadn’t said more than a handful of words since he’d awoken in that room.

Aware he might give himself away every time he opened his mouth, likely with some small detail or turn of phrase, he did his best to remain silent, even as he looked around the disorienting room and environment in which he found himself.

He had already determined some sort of anomaly had occurred.

Unless he was dead.

He might be dead.

From their conversation however, he inferred he was back in London.

He also inferred it was nothing like the London he had left in 1870.

Time.

Somehow, he had walked through that archway in his father’s crypt, and he had fallen through a hole ripped in time. Well, time and space, since he was no longer in the countryside outside of St. Petersburg, either.

The anomaly had brought him back home.

Which apparently was home to some other version of Ghost, as well.

Which brought up another nagging concern. Ghost suspected it might be better all around if he wasnotstill here when that other version of himself returned.

Still, he had no idea how to recreate the anomaly that had brought him here.

He could simply run away, of course, but would that solve his problem?

Perhaps he should wait for the other Ghost.

---