“We are, Mr. Callan,” Alaina said, stepping forward to defend her friends. “We’re just trying to make the best of a bad situation.”

Suddenly feeling weak, he let the subject drop as he leaned back against the door. Once again his gaze fell on Faith, who stood beside her bed. Desire stirred through the haze of pain. Desire to stretch out with her on cool crisp sheets and feel her small soft hands on his fevered skin. Her eyes widened slightly as she took in his predatory expression.

“You didn’t find anything, did you?” she blurted out, crossing her arms to keep her hands from fidgeting.

Don’t let him see he makes you nervous, she thought, then groaned inwardly. Lord, Faith, he’s a man, not a charging rhinoceros. Besides, she was fairly certain he wouldn’t have come running had she announced she was having hopelessly romantic notions about him. At the moment his mind was occupied with things other than the mysteries of biological attraction.

Shane took in the feminine decor of the room in a narrow-eyed glance, not answering. He hated to admit defeat. He had followed thumping noises all over the upstairs of the main house and not gotten so much as a glimpse of the cause. Every time he’d thought he’d cornered the culprit, the thump had sounded three rooms away.

It irked the hell out of him. If only he weren’t so damned tired. If only he could clear the fuzz out of his brain, he was sure he could have figured out what was going on up there. At the moment he didn’t believe he could figure out two plus two.

“No.” The word was the next best thing to a growl. “I didn’t find anything, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t anything up there.”

Faith nearly chuckled at the disgruntled scowl that tugged down his straight black brows and the corners of his mouth. She gave him a smug smile, unable to resist. “I told you so.”

“I’m not about to swallow that ghost story,” he declared. He started to lift his left hand to wag a finger at her, but the pain in his shoulder stopped him. He gritted his teeth against it as it rocketed through his chest and arm, and he leaned back against the door again to steady himself.

“We have a friend who is a psychic investigator who could no doubt explain it to you better than I,” Faith said, trying to imagine Shane Callan and Bryan Hennessy embroiled in a debate over paranormal phenomena. “But he’s working in Britain right now, and the best I can do is tell you in plain English-this house is haunted.”

Jayne plopped down cross-legged on the pink-and-cream-colored quilt that covered Faith’s bed, her voluminous skirt billowing around her. “You should talk to Mr. Fitz about it. He’s full of ghost stories about this place.”

Shane scowled harder at mention of the irascible old caretaker. “Ghost stories aren’t the only thing he’s full of, nor are they what I want to hear.”

“I can’t offer another explanation,” Faith said.

“You’ve been through the whole house. Your men have been watching it constantly. No one could have gotten in.”

“Unless they had help from inside.”

Alaina shook her head as his cool gray gaze settled on her. “We’ve had this conversation before.”

He turned to Jayne, who started in surprise at his suspicion. “Don’t look at me, honey! I don’t even like violence in film. I’m a firm believer in the transcendental rise of man above his baser physical nature.”

Shane opened his mouth to comment, but Faith cut him off with a friendly warning. “Shane, please, stop accusing my friends.”

“It’s my job,” he said, exasperated by her overabundance of blind trust.

“Well, you’re very good at it. The only person who’s managed to escape your jaundiced eye is Lindy.”

Shane did a better job of ignoring her sarcasm than he did of ignoring the way her crossed arms lifted her breasts. The womanly mounds plumped together beneath the fabric of her sweatshirt, the outline of hard nipples clearly indicating she wore no bra. Business, Shane, he told himself. Strictly business.

“What about secret passages? Have you found any as you’ve been working on the house?”

The man was remarkable. “Who do we look like, Charlie’s Angels?” Faith asked. “I’m opening the place as an inn, not a spook house.”

“You’re the one going on about ghosts,” Shane grumbled. He rubbed at the incessant pounding in his right temple. Damn, but his head was feeling fuzzy. He barely heard Faith’s next words through the thick, cotton-wool fog that enveloped his brain.

“We have them.” She shrugged, knowing she probably wouldn’t have been able to convince Shane had Captain Dugan materialized at her side that very moment, peg leg and all. “What can I say?”

Shane pushed himself away from the door, his legs feeling as thick and heavy as tree trunks. The puzzle would have to wait until morning to be solved. He couldn’t think anymore. Damned if he was going to be able to move. He had to find a place to sit down for a couple of minutes.

Faith’s heart lurched as she realized how pale he looked. His face had gone as white as the apparitions he refused to believe in. Alarm streaked through her as he took another step and dropped like a rock at her feet.

“We’ve got to get him to the hospital. Jayne, go call the ambulance.”

“No. No ambulance. We can’t attract the attention. The whole case will be shot to hell.”

“Damn your case!”

Shane could hear the conversation going on above him. He recognized the voices as those of agent Del Matthews and Faith Kincaid. Del sounded unflappable. Faith sounded frantic. They both sounded far away.

He tried to rouse the strength to stand, but his body was nothing more than dead weight, oblivious to the commands of his considerable will. He couldn’t even muster the energy to offer an opinion on the situation. It took every scrap of power he had to concentrate, to keep from slipping over the edge into the black void of unconsciousness.

“I can handle this, Ms. Kincaid. I was a medic in ’Nam. It’s not as serious as it looks.”

“He’ll need medication-”

“It’ll be taken care of ma’am.”

Shane forced his eyes open a slit and caught the look Alaina Montgomery shot at Del. “Lord, they’re worse than the damn Boy Scouts-always prepared.”

Suddenly Mr. Fitz loomed overhead like a giant billy goat, scratching at his snaggled whiskers, an unholy light in his eyes. The smell of fish hung around him like an acrid cloud. “Lord, ladies, what did ye do to the rascal? Did he have it comin’?”

“Mr. Fitz, please stand back,” Matthews asked, exasperated. The towheaded agent leaned over Shane with a penlight, checking his pupils for response.

Shane squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them again, Faith was bent over him, concern etched in every feature of her heart-shaped face. She sure was pretty, he noted, needing something to fasten his mind on. Her teeth dug into her full lower lip. He remembered how sweet that lip tasted-like cherry soda. She reached down and stroked his cheek with fingertips that felt like icicles on his burning skin.

She was worried about him. It was there in her lovely sable eyes, but Shane could feel it more than see it. He grasped it with a sense that had no name and wasn’t counted among the five most normally used. He could feel Faith’s concern. And he wondered, just before he lost consciousness, what it would be like to let down his guard and let this woman’s concern touch his innermost self, the lonely man he kept locked inside him behind walls of wariness and cynicism.

Heaven. It would be like heaven, but heaven was a long way out of his reach.

The dream he fell into was an old one. For months it had been his nightly companion, but he had gradually banished it. In recent years it had returned to haunt him only when he had been too weak to fight it off. This was one of those times. The shiver that coursed through his big body as the scene began to unfold in his mind was one of dread. A sick sense of anticipation twisted like a knife in his chest.