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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!
Chapter 2
D ella’s breath was short and her heartbeat rapid. She was frightened and yet curious. She’d never closed her mind to new experiences and even as a warning went off in her head, she moved slowly to the bottom of the stairs. Putting a shaky hand on the newel post, she stared up the old staircase. There was no sign of the ghostly figures that had been there a moment before. Cautiously, she mounted one step, then another until she reached the first landing. After turning on a wall light, she looked down the hall in both directions.
Empty. Workmen’s clutter was everywhere—lumber, sawhorses, boxes, sacks of plaster, cans of paint. Everywhere was the same mess she’d left earlier in the day.
She walked to the steps leading to the third floor and stared upward. She couldn’t hear anything in the echoing darkness except the clatter of rain upon the roof. She swallowed a hard lump in her throat. The hotel was as it had always been.
She turned around and slowly went downstairs to the lobby. A wash of relief swept over her when she saw it was again in shadow, except for the night-light at the hotel entrance. The old chandelier was once again lost in the darkness of the vaulted ceiling. Everything was exactly as it had been before the weird impression of light and ghostly women.
Della’s forehead beaded with nervous sweat as she looked around the lobby and up the empty staircase. How could her senses have fooled her so completely? She brushed a hand across her eyes and suddenly a swish of cold air hit her face, blowing her blond hair back from her face.
She cried out and turned to flee. For an instant, she saw the silhouette of a man reflected in the windowpane. Colin? In the next instant, the impression was gone. A bleak light from a streetlamp illuminated the deserted street outside.
She fled down the hall to her apartment. Her fingers trembled as she shut the door on the rest of the unoccupied hotel and leaned against it. Her heart hammered in her chest. Her breath caught. Her eyes went to the wing chair, which still held the impression of Colin’s body. Could his obsession with the past have affected her more than she realized. Yes, that must be it. His emotional reaction to the discovery of the tunnel and his talk about Shawn Delaney’s murder must have planted subliminal images in her mind. He had made the hotel’s past come alive and she had momentarily lost touch with reality.
Angry with him and herself, she was tempted to call him and tell him what had happened. The impulse died quickly. She knew she wouldn’t tell him. She wouldn’t tell anybody. The whole thing was too bizarre.
She was tired. The problems of renovating the hotel were getting to her, and Colin’s visit had unsettled her. She wasn’t sure how she felt about him. He fascinated her, in a strange way. When he held her hand, she felt drawn to him in a way that mocked her usual cool demeanor toward attractive men. And when he’d talked about his mother, she’d been jolted by the force of raw emotion emanating from him. The hatred in his eyes when he’d talked about his great-grandfather had been so intense that even now she felt herself recoil from it. Surely he didn’t believe anyone who had been dead over a hundred years could be responsible for tainting the heredity of all the Delaney men?
As she prepared for bed, Della was determined not to think about the odd experience in the lobby. Her vivid imagination had played a trick on her, that was all.
A few minutes later, on the edge of sleep, the vision came back so sharply and clearly, she could have described the old-fashioned gowns in detail: velvet green and red satin peplum overskirts pulled back into ruffled bustles that trailed down to the floor; low-cut necklines edged in silk flowers and gathered ecru lace; scalloped streamers and velvet-ribbon bows dotting full skirts and puffed sleeves. Even the lace gloves and glittering fans were clear in her memory. I must have seen an old picture like that at some time, she told herself. That was the only explanation that made sense.
The next couple of days were hectic and Della had little time or energy to think about anything but the renovation of the hotel. She solved one crisis only to be faced with another. The work proceeded at a snail’s pace and the estimates of time and money were way off. She raised hell with the construction foreman and then called her banker who confirmed what she feared—her cash flow was edging toward the danger point.
“You better get those cost overruns under control,” he told her.
She checked every invoice to make sure she wasn’t being ripped off. Her investment was turning into a fiasco and confidence in her business judgment was waning. Della let the phone ring three times before she grabbed it impatiently and barked, “Hello.”
“No need to ask you how your day’s going,” Colin said in his deep resonant voice. “You sound ready to eat bear.”
“Bears, snails, rattlesnakes. Anything that moves.”
“I guess this is a bad time to remind you about the civic development dinner. I was going to suggest that I stop by and we walk over to the restaurant together.”
She ran an agitated hand through her mussed blond hair. “I’d forgotten about it. I don’t think I’ll be going.”
“It’s important that everyone pull together to make the area a financial success,” he said in a reasonable tone that added to her irritation.
“I know that,” she snapped. “Save your chamber of commerce speech for someone else.” Then she instantly felt ashamed. She leaned back in her chair and threw down her pencil. “I’m sorry. It’s just that…well, I wouldn’t be very good company.”
“You have to eat,” he answered reasonably. “And I could round up a snail or two to put on your plate if that will make you happy.”
She was surprised at his light tone. She could picture a slight smile on the edge of his lips. Well, why not, she thought. Maybe she just needed to share her problems with someone who would understand. Besides, she really wanted to see him again. He’d been in her thoughts more than she was willing to admit.
“Forget the snails, bears and rattlesnakes,” she said. “Roast beef will do fine.”
“Good. I’ll pick you up about seven-thirty. The restaurant’s only a few blocks away. If you don’t mind walking…?”
“I don’t mind. See you then.” She hung up, surprised to find that their brief conversation had somehow restored her equilibrium. With new energy, she cleared off her desk and then left the office. She walked all over the hotel, checking on the work.
She was on the third floor talking to a painter, when a brush of cold air hit her face and she broke off in midsentence. At the same instant, she heard the sound of running water, and a woman’s soft laugh came from a nearby room that had originally been a shared bath. When Della jerked open the door, she couldn’t believe her eyes.
A voluptuous naked woman with red hair piled high on her head was taking a bath in the old claw-footed tub. She hummed contentedly and poured water over her face with cupped fleshy hands.
Della gave a choked cry.
“What’s the matter, miss?” asked the small wizened man who was filling his paint tray a few steps away. Della pointed.
He walked over, looked into the bathroom and shrugged. “Just an old tub. Don’t see nothing to get excited about.”
“That’s all you see? An old tub?” An arctic chill crept up her spine.
“Yep.” He gave her a queer look and returned to his painting.
Della looked again. The old tub was empty and dry. And yet she was positive she could still hear humming and splashing water. Like someone caught in a nightmare, she turned and walked away. When she reached the stairwell, she looked back down the hall. The shadow of a man stood watching her, his stance frighteningly familiar. Colin?
She pressed her hands against her temples. I’ve lost my mind. Crazy people couldn’t distinguish between reality and fantasy. And neither can I. The woman in the bathtub, the old-fashioned ladies wandering through the hall, the man in the shadows, they were all in her mind. No one else was aware of the invaders. No one else seemed to notice whiffs of cheap perfume overriding the paint smells. She was the only one aware of the ghosts who had taken over her hotel.
When Colin came to pick her up, he eyed the strained lines around her mouth and the dull glaze in her gray-green eyes. She was like a tight spring ready to pop, every muscle tense and rigid. Her soft appealing lips were taut. Her nervous hands smoothed the skirt of her simple white dress and tugged at a soft pink scarf looped in a puff at her neck. “You weren’t kidding about having a bad day, were you?”
She opened her mouth as if to say something but then closed it and only nodded.
He was puzzled by her behavior. She’d always shown extreme self-direction and competence while handling the business end of buying the hotel and arranging for its renovation. More than once, he’d admired her direct, unemotional approach to problems. She was a rare combination of strength and feminine softness. From the first moment he’d met her, she’d intrigued him. Intelligent. Fascinating. And beautiful. The direct unblinking beauty of her large eyes haunted him. The proud lift of her chin made him want to cup her face in his hands and taste her sweet lips. He wanted her.
But he knew better than to bring any woman into his life. His mother had warned him that Delaney men brought only destruction to those foolish enough to fall in love with them. His heart constricted when he thought about Elena, his first love, who had drowned before his very eyes. God forgive him if he’d already betrayed Della Arnell by selling the hotel to her.
“If you really don’t want to go…?” I should have stayed away from her, he thought when he saw her ashen face.
“No, it’s all right. I have to get out of this place.” She turned away abruptly and preceded him out the front door.
He silently swore. It was the hotel. The blasted hotel. The past was like a cancerous growth that would not go away.
They walked in silence. After a couple of blocks, Della was aware that Colin was striding beside her with a ferocity that did little to ease the tightness in her chest and stomach. Why had she agreed to go with him? Her lips quivered. Desperation, that’s why. She hadn’t wanted to be alone in the hotel—alone with ghosts of the past.
He stopped abruptly when they reached the restaurant. “I don’t feel like going to any meeting.” He put a hand on her elbow and guided her past the café. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all.” She was relieved that he’d been perceptive enough to know that sitting in a room full of businesspeople, making polite remarks and trying to listen to a dinner speaker were more than she could handle.
She glanced at his profile and saw tight muscles flickering in his taut cheeks. Had her mood affected him so much that he was willing to forgo his civic duty? What was going on behind those deep-set eyes of his? His dedication to upgrading Market and Larimer streets was almost a religious passion, as if he felt compelled to single-handedly eradicate all evidence of the town’s early red-light district. Once again she wondered if his obsession with the past could somehow be responsible for her terrifying fantasies. Had he mesmerized her in some way, so that she was seeing the hotel through a historical haze?
He caught her apprehensive look and pulled her to a stop. “What’s the matter? You’re looking at me as if I have horns sprouting from my forehead. Tell me what’s going on.”
She moistened her lips. I’m going crazy. Old-fashioned ladies of the night are wandering around my hotel. I even found one taking a bath upstairs. For a horrid moment, she wasn’t sure whether or not she had spoken her thoughts aloud. When his expression remained the same, she knew that he was still waiting for an answer.
“I…I’ve been having bad dreams,” she stammered. That was close enough. Dreams were accepted as a sane phenomenon and she couldn’t tell him the truth. She couldn’t tell anyone. She kept her eyes focused slightly to the right of his face so she wouldn’t have to meet his eyes.
“What kind of dreams?”
“I…I don’t remember,” she lied.
His dark eyebrows narrowed over the bridge of his nose. “You don’t remember?”
She pointed to an outdoor café across the street. “I need a drink.”
They were waiting for the light to change when the sidewalk suddenly dipped beneath her feet. She gasped, wavered and grabbed Colin to steady herself.
What was happening?
She could see Colin’s lips moving but couldn’t hear what he was saying. Everything around her was in flux. Panic-stricken, her eyes darted in every direction. The buildings, the people, the smells, the noise. Her ears roared with the sound of horses neighing and carriage wheels clattering over rough streets. She cried out and covered her ears with her hands.
“What’s wrong?” she heard Colin ask.
She tried to jerk away from him as he pulled her against him, caught in a panicked impulse to flee, to hide, to escape from the assaulting sounds and sights that had no reality. “Let me go,” she sobbed against his chest.
“It’s all right, it’s all right.” He stroked her hair and put his lips against her moist forehead.
