Читать книгу A Twist In Time - Lee Karr - Страница 7

D ella Arnell crossed her arms and shivered as she looked out the window of the old hotel she’d recently bought for renovation. Despite an expensive new heating system, a chill remained in the high-ceilinged rooms and lobby of the historic building. In the darkness of rain and shadow, streetlights stood like lonely sentinels along the sidewalks of lower downtown Denver.

Staring out, she tried to focus beyond the streams of water assaulting the windowpane. She could barely make out a vacant lot and an old warehouse across the street. Most of the buildings on the famous “Row,” Denver’s 1880s red-light district, were being torn down or renovated. In the steady downpour of black rain, the street was without any sign of life. She was about to turn away, when a hand and face suddenly pressed against the glass at eye level. She cried out and jerked back.

The shadowy face disappeared and in the next moment there was pounding on the front door. “Let me in, Della.”

Above the noise of the rain, she recognized Colin Delaney’s voice. Relieved and angry at the same time, she opened the door to the dark-haired Irishman. “What on earth do you think you’re doing, scaring me like that?” she railed.

“I didn’t mean to frighten you.” Thick black eyebrows and eyelashes dripped water as he squinted at her. “Sorry,” he said gruffly as he brushed back the hair waving darkly around his face.

She would have preferred that a smile accompany his apology, but in the few weeks she’d known Colin, his strong Celtic features rarely softened into casual smiles. His rugged good looks had intrigued her when they first met, but something about his guarded nature made her uneasy. She wondered why he was paying her a visit on such a stormy night.

A flash of lightning forked across the night sky, followed by a loud clap of vibrating thunder. All at once, the chilled air in the hotel snapped with electricity, as if Colin had brought the storm in with him. As he stood there, looming over her, his face in shadow, Della wished he hadn’t come. She was suddenly uneasy for the first time since she had moved into the empty three-story hotel. During the day, the place was filled with workmen doing the renovations, but at night she was alone—and vulnerable.

She gave herself a mental shake. Colin Delaney had sold her this hotel, which had been in his family for four generations, and she was satisfied that the investment would pay off now that the new Rockies baseball field was completed. All of her dealings with Colin had been straightforward and businesslike. Why was she uneasy about this visit?

“Did you walk from your office in this downpour?” she asked, trying to make some sense out of his showing up in the midst of lightning and thunder. As he took off his lightweight raincoat, she saw that the soft navy slacks and a light summer pullover damply accented his hard physique.

“I suppose I could have called, but I wanted to talk to you face-to-face,” he admitted.

She was puzzled. From the first time she’d met Colin Delaney, she’d felt peculiarly off stride around him and found his strong masculine energy disconcerting. She knew he was a bachelor with no immediate family, and as far as she knew, no serious relationships at the moment. But he gave every indication of knowing his way around women. As much as she may have been tempted, their business relationship had never edged toward anything personal. Any romantic entanglement with a man like Colin Delaney would create the kind of emotional waves that Della had been trying to avoid. She wasn’t prim or frigid, only cautious when it came to her love life. She’d always been able to control her emotions, and the few men who had briefly romanced her had never threatened the deep feelings she kept hidden and protected. She had to admit, however, that Colin challenged that protective detachment. She didn’t like the way he could engage her emotions without even seeming to realize he was doing it. She felt her defenses go up. “I don’t understand what could be so urgent to bring you out on a night like this.”

“It’s important,” he said flatly.

A lot of property in the area had come down through the Delaney family to Colin. She knew that his investment company was turning a couple of old warehouses into loft apartments just a couple of blocks away. But he’d been very tight-lipped about the reasons he’d decided not to renovate the historic Denver Railroad Hotel himself.

“All right. Come back to my apartment,” Della said. Their footsteps echoed on the wooden floor as she led the way down a short hall to the three rooms behind the hotel office, which she had turned into her private apartment. Blending the old with the new had been a challenge. She’d cleaned the brick fireplace, polished blackened copper fixtures to a bright glow, freshened the elaborate moldings adorning the walls and ceilings, and chosen wallpaper and window hangings that were harmonious with the ambience of the original building. She had filled the apartment with some nice pieces of old furniture from her aunt’s home and had added a few things she’d found in the shops on Larimer Street.

Much to her surprise, Colin nodded his approval as his measuring gaze went around the living room. “I like it.”

His open appreciation of what she’d accomplished in her apartment disarmed her. “Thank you,” she said as a spurt of pleasure rushed through her.

“I think you’ve made a good investment.”

She laughed. “I hope so. My Aunt Frances would be horrified to see what I’ve done with the inheritance she left me. She never gambled on anything speculative. Always put her money in solid investments. The idea of buying this place and spending so much money on renovations would have sent her into orbit. My aunt wasn’t sentimental about anything. She was a hard-nosed businesswoman.”

“Like you?” Was there a hint of a smile at the corner of those appealing masculine lips?

“I owe my aunt for whatever business sense I have,” she admitted. “She raised my sister and me from the time we were ten and twelve. My parents were killed by a drunken motorist who demolished our car. Somehow Brenda and I miraculously survived the crash.”

“I didn’t know you had a sister.”

An ache Della thought she’d conquered stabbed her. “I’m two years older. Brenda never adjusted to Aunt Frances’s strict upbringing and ran away from home when she was sixteen. She broke my heart and was a great disappointment to my aunt.”

“And you tried to make up for it?”

“I suppose so,” she said thoughtfully. “Yes. I guess I’ve always been what you’d call an over-achiever.” She gave a light dismissive laugh and fixed her gray-green eyes on him. She realized she was glad he’d come. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

He studied her for a moment as if debating whether or not to accept her gesture of hospitality. Then he nodded.

“Be back in a minute.” She quickly prepared a tray in the kitchenette, and when she returned he was sitting in a wing chair that had been her aunt’s favorite. His arms rested on the padded curves of the chair and soft cushions cradled his firm body as he leaned back. Even though he was in a relaxed position, she sensed in him a guarded inner shield. Flickering, leaping flames were reflected in his blue-black eyes as he stared pensively into the fire. As she stood beside him, she was aware of long legs, muscular arms and shapely hands that reeked of masculine sensuality.

She set the tray on the coffee table and handed him one of the steaming cups.

“Thank you.” His appraising gaze traveled boldly from her honey blond head to her scuffed shoes.

She stifled an impulse to tuck in the wispy strands of hair that had slipped out of her French braid. Her faded jeans, blue-checked short-sleeved blouse and dirty canvas shoes showed the wear and tear of a day spent in the middle of sawed boards and paint cans. The fact that she looked a mess upset her more than she was willing to admit. He could have called ahead and given her a little warning, she thought ruefully, and then silently laughed at herself. This unexpected visit was not a social call. He’d had plenty of chances to ask her out and hadn’t.

“Sugar? Cream?” she asked.

“Black.”

“I hope it’s strong enough,” she said as she sat down in the middle of a couch opposite his chair. Why had he come to see her tonight, in the middle of a storm? she wondered again. She studied him over the rim of her cup and felt a stab of awareness. Why did she have the feeling that his visit was going to affect her in some momentous way? Her stomach muscles suddenly tightened.

His long fingers curled around the cup. A soft brush of black hair showed darkly on his tanned wrists. When he leaned forward in his chair, she found she was holding her breath in anticipation.

“Tell me about it,” he ordered.

“What?” She looked blank.

“This afternoon on the phone, you said you’d made an interesting discovery about the hotel. What did you find?”

“Oh, that!” She gave a relieved wave of her hand. Is that why he’d come? She had called him on a business matter and on impulse had told him she’d show him something interesting the next time he came around. “I didn’t mean to sound all that mysterious.” She smiled. “We didn’t find a cache of buried gold under a floorboard, or anything like that.”

He didn’t return her smile. “What did you find?”

She took a moment to set down her coffee cup. Something in his manner was making her nervous. “A relic of the hotel’s shady past, that’s all.”

“What?”

“A couple of workmen were shoring up the floor in the basement corner of the building and found a tunnel.”

The chords in his neck tightened. “Are you sure?”

“At first, we thought it might be an old wine cellar, but it’s a tunnel, all right…a very old one. One of the men took a few steps inside and said it probably runs under the street.”

She waited for his response and when he remained silent, she prodded, “Did you know about it?”

A shadow passed over his eyes. “I thought it had been destroyed long ago,” he said tautly.

She didn’t like the look in his eyes or his tone of voice. Anger was there, and something else, some deep emotion she couldn’t quite identify. Hatred? Suppressed violence? She was taken back by the sudden lines around his mouth.

“I guess I should have known. Evil never stays buried,” he said.

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t have to understand,” he told her. “Just fill the damn thing in!”

His sharp tone brought a flash of color to her cheeks. She’d already instructed the workmen to close up the passage when they had time but she wasn’t about to say so to him. His autocratic manner rankled. She looked him steadily in the face, her jaw set as rigid as his. “This is my property now. I’ll decide what to do with it.”

A black cloud crossed his face, then he swore, got to his feet and stared down at her. For a moment, she thought he was going to jerk her to her feet. Instead, he turned his back to her and put his hands on the mantel. Leaning against it, he stared into the fire.

She was bewildered by his dramatic reaction to the discovery of an old tunnel that had been closed off for years. What importance could it have after all this time?

He stood looking at the fire for a long while. The loud cracking of falling logs was the only sound in the room. Then he gave a deep sigh and turned around. “I suppose I’d better explain as best I can.”

The anguish in his tone touched her. She wanted to say something but no words would come. Tiny lines deepened around his eyes, and he surprised her by sitting beside her on the couch. His nearness only heightened the disturbing physical awareness pulsating through her. He leaned his dark head against the sofa cushion and stared at the ceiling.

“What is it? I don’t understand why you’re so upset.”

“The Delaney family has quite a sordid past. And that tunnel is a part of it.”

If he hadn’t been so intense, she would have chided him about family skeletons. The muscles in his hard cheeks flickered with suppressed anger, but there were other emotions in his eyes, hurt and sadness. She didn’t know what to make of him. When he began to speak, his voice was soft, as if the words came from far, far away.

“When this hotel was built in 1880 one of the vacant lots across the street had a brothel sitting on it. The infamous Maude Mullen’s Pleasure House. The tunnel you found connected this hotel to that whorehouse.” He stared at some unseen point in front of his haunted eyes. “That’s where my great-grandfather was murdered. Stabbed to death on its doorstep.”

She knew that her mouth had dropped open. No wonder the discovery of the tunnel had given him an emotional jolt, she thought. “I didn’t realize that the tunnel was tied in with any personal history. I haven’t read much about old-time Denver,” she confessed. She’d been raised in New Mexico and had only been in Denver for a few years, working as bookkeeper for an oil company until she bought the hotel. There must be more to the story, thought Della, more than he’s telling. Why should he be so emotional about a tragedy that happened over a hundred years ago? She waited for him to go on but he just stared with narrowed eyes as if watching a film roll by in his mind. She was uneasy with his silence. “Why don’t you tell me about it. I never heard of your great-grandfather or what happened to him.”

His mouth tightened in a hard line. “My illustrious forefathers debauched the Delaney name in great fashion. There’s speculation that my great-grandfather, Shawn Delaney, ran all the illegal activities in Denver’s early red-light strip and was murdered by someone who wanted to take over. Others claimed that a jealous lady of the night stabbed him to death.” There was a grim edge to his voice. “A true Delaney. And he passed along his legacy.”

“What legacy is that?”

“My mother called it the devil’s spawn.”

The devil’s spawn. She stared at his ashen face. “Do you believe in such things?”

“I only know that the Delaney men passed on their dark genes,” he said bitterly. “My grandfather, Shawn’s son, grew up to be a ruthless slumlord, heartless and selfish, exploiting the run-down Market Street properties without ever putting one cent back into them. Everything touched by the Delaneys had the smell of decay and decadence.”

“Were you close to him…your grandfather?”

“Hell, no. He wasn’t close to anyone. Everyone said he was Shawn Delaney all over again, but he didn’t get himself killed. He lived to be nearly ninety. His only son, my father, grew up to be a bastard in true Delaney fashion. He made life hell for my mother and drank himself to death before he was twenty-five.”

“And you inherited all the Market Street property from your grandfather?”

He nodded. “I decided to sell most of it. I thought I could lay an ugly past to rest—but it just won’t stay buried. Why did that blasted tunnel have to come to light? It’s as if the ghost of Shawn Delaney just won’t let go.”

His talk of ghosts gave her a creepy feeling. She could hear wind and rain pounding the old building, and the tempo of lightning and thunder had increased. Once again, she felt a harmony between Colin’s dark glower and the raging storm.

Maybe I shouldn’t have bought property in this part of Denver. Maybe no matter how she painted and remodeled, Della thought, the hotel would remain the same depraved place as when a tunnel had connected it to a fancy bordello. Maybe the area’s colored past would never be changed, either.

As if reading her thoughts, Colin said, “This was a wild part of Denver in the late 1880s. Variety halls, saloons, gambling houses, cribs, racy madams running houses of ill repute…you name it. Drugs. Gambling. Drinking. And hapless young women selling themselves.”

Della’s lips tightened. Young women plying their favors for money struck too close to home. As a runaway, her sister, Brenda, had taken up with men who paid her bills. In the end, she had thrown her life away on men and drugs.

Colin watched her face. “I should have torn down the blasted hotel instead of selling it to anybody.”

“Don’t be foolish.” Her practical nature overrode her fantasies. “I came to you, remember? Property in this part of town was attracting a lot of investors and I knew that if I didn’t buy it, somebody else would. What’s past is past!” she added more firmly than she felt at the moment.

“Not when it intrudes upon the present.”

“Don’t let it intrude,” she answered bluntly.

“I wish it were as simple as that. I sold the hotel to you because I thought that you were the one who could give it a new life…a different karma. But it’s no use. Some places are like sinkholes, no matter how you try to cover them up, they suck the innocent in.”

“I don’t believe that finding an old tunnel changes anything about my hotel and its future. Maybe its history is sordid and ugly, but what happened over a hundred years ago is only a curiosity as far as I’m concerned.”

A shaft of shadow crossed his face. “I hope to God you’re right. I wouldn’t want you to be drawn into any of the black machinations I’ve fought all my life.” A fearsome pain crossed his eyes and a dark strangeness put his whole face in shadows. She wasn’t afraid of him, but his presence completely unnerved her.

He must have felt her withdrawal. “I’m sorry. I can’t expect you to understand.” He turned away and said abruptly, “I’d better be going.”

“Wait.” She stood up and caught his arm. “I want to understand.”

“No, don’t try. I was wrong to come.” He walked toward the hall.

“I’ll see you out,” she said quickly.

When they reached the front door, the force of the storm was evident again through the windowpane. A quickening wind swept down the street and a fresh onslaught of rain beat against the windows.

“It’s raining harder than before,” Della said.

Colin looked out the door and nodded. Then he unexpectedly reached over and took her hand. His touch was surprisingly gentle and warm, and at the same time firm and engulfing. A spiral of heat radiated through her at the contact.

“I didn’t mean to involve you,” he said quietly. “I wasn’t thinking…or I wouldn’t have come.”

“It’s all right. I’m sorry I was so insensitive about the tunnel. I didn’t know anything about Shawn Delaney.”

His hand tightened on hers and his body grew rigid. “My mother always said she couldn’t tell our pictures apart…that I was his evil soul incarnate.”

Della was horrified. “When did she tell you that?”

“The day before she killed herself.”

He dropped her hand and turned swiftly toward the door. He jerked it open, and bent his head against the attack of wind and rain. The next minute he was gone, swallowed up in sheets of gray rain.

Della locked the door behind him and hugged herself as she stared out into the watery bedlam. Her thoughts reeled. What had Colin done to make his mother treat her son so horribly?

He radiated a hot, compelling passion that she feared could be devastating if he chose to unleash it upon a woman. Fervent, driven, obsessed, he attracted her on levels that went beyond common sense. She knew she was in danger of giving way to a physical, emotional and sexual attraction that could make her a stranger to herself. If she had any sense, she would keep a wide distance between herself and the handsome, brooding Colin Delaney.

She turned away from the front door and had taken only a few steps when she stopped short.

“What—”

She jerked her eyes upward. A high chandelier began to glow above her. The shadowy darkness disappeared before her startled gaze. She looked around the lobby in disbelief. A second earlier, the hotel had been dark and empty. Now the glitter of brass and dark red Victorian furnishings assaulted her vision.

Two young women stood at the bottom of the carpeted stairs. Dressed in low-cut satin gowns with draped bustles and ruffled swags, the painted ladies boldly lifted their satin skirts to mount the stairs. The harlots tossed their feathered, high-piled hair and disappeared into the shadows of the second-floor landing.

Della stared after them, unable to move. I’m hallucinating. I have to be!