The Shop of Shades and Secrets (Modern Gothic Romance 1) (39 page)

He watched. The hair and nerve endings all along his arms fairly vibrated as the figure took shape, the face evolving into a clear, detailed image…one that was so familiar to him that he glanced down to make sure Fiona was still there next to him. She moaned, shifting against his legs, and he looked back up.

“Gretchen.” He whispered her name.

His fingers were cold, but he wasn’t frightened. He gripped the smooth statue, slick now from the sweat on his palms, and watched the ghostly figure seep back into nothingness as though her work was complete.

There was darkness, then another loud crash next to him. Then, just as Gideon brought the statue down on the back of Barnaby’s head, there was abrupt, dead, silence.

Chapter Twenty-one

When Fiona opened her eyes, she saw Gideon’s face, close to hers, his eyes bright with concern.

She blinked, struggling to collect her murky thoughts. Something was wrong…her brows drew together and she swallowed, her dry throat rasping with the effort.

Then she remembered: Barnaby.

“Shh…he’s not going to hurt you, baby,” Gideon told her, and she realized she must have spoken the man’s name aloud. “Although I’d rather hoped my name would have been the first thing you said….” He smiled gently.

Fiona couldn’t hold back her own painful grin. She didn’t know what happened, or how Gideon had managed to be there, but he had made a rare joke, so that meant all was right.

He pressed a kiss to her forehead, murmured something that sounded like “I love you” and then pulled back to look down at her. His face was so dear to her, so handsome and familiar and
wanted
…Fiona felt like she was going to get lost in the warmth and love in his eyes.

Something had changed. The shutters had come away from his face, and it was open, glowing, soft.

Fiona became aware that they weren’t alone and she struggled to sit up on a sofa. People were moving around, talking, lights were on….

They were in the shop, she realized, her mind still foggy as she recognized the back room. Yes, that was right—Barnaby had brought her here, then pulled a gun on her.

She shuddered, and Gideon pulled her close to his warm, solid body that smelled—not of overpowering cologne, but of maleness and strength. Goosebumps lifted on her bare arms, and he smoothed his large hands over them, up and down, slowly, as she gathered her thoughts and looked around the room.

“What happened?” she managed to say, just as a uniformed man walked up to them.

“How do you feel, miss?” he asked, reaching for her wrist to check her pulse before she could reply.

Fiona endured several moments of being fussed over—and it reminded her of Gideon’s annoyance the night he’d been injured during the first break-in at the shop. Now she understood why he hadn’t wanted to be dragged off to the emergency room. “I feel fine,” she told the paramedic. “I just have a headache.”

As the medic lifted her arms and checked her lumps and scratches, Fiona returned her attention to Gideon, who’d been holding her hand through the whole thing. “What happened Gideon?”

He told her that Iva and Hollis had been worried about her, and that was why he’d tracked her down at the shop—only to be accosted by Barnaby.

“How did you get the gun away from him?” Fiona asked, glancing at her date for the evening, who had been handcuffed before he roused from his position on the floor.

Gideon looked uncomfortable, as though he couldn’t find the words. “He got—er—uh—distracted, and I smashed him on the head with that Buddha statue.”

“Distracted?” But Fiona suspected she knew what had happened.

Gretchen’s Lamp—perhaps Gretchen herself—had helped them out. She reached to touch Gideon’s cheek. It was warm and prickly from the stubble that had already begun to spring up, and she slid her hand around to cup his jaw. How she’d missed touching him!

Then she remembered…Leslie. “Where is she? Leslie?” Her heart hammered in her throat as her joy drained away. No. She couldn’t endure losing this closeness again. Fiona looked aside before Gideon could see what was in her eyes.

“She’s not here, Fiona. She’s not going to be here…it’s over between us.”

“No, Gideon, you can’t—” With every last remnant of strength and integrity, Fiona turned to look at him, fierceness in her eyes. She wouldn’t let him do that.

“Shush, baby…shhh…It’s over and it’s all right.” He pressed a kiss with exquisite tenderness to her forehead. “The baby isn’t mine, Fiona, it’s not mine and she sent me to you. She told me tonight, after you left…after you and I talked.” He gathered her close, pulling her away from the medic, who finally got the hint and gathered his equipment up to leave. Gideon held her as joy rebuilt inside her.

“Gideon…” she murmured into his broad shoulder. “Oh my God, are you sure?”

He nodded against her, his face bumping into the top of her head. “She even showed me the DNA results…I made her prove it. I didn’t want there to be anything hanging between us any more. Fiona, I’ve been lost without you…I want you in my life. I love you.”

“I love you, Gideon. I thought my heart would break when I had to tell you to go to her…”

He held her for a long moment there on the floor, in the corner and away from the police and medics who were attending to Barnaby and the other evidence. Suddenly a familiar peremptory bellow reached their ears. “Gideon! Fiona!”

Gideon Senior and Iva burst upon them, both demanding to know if they were all right. Gideon’s grandfather’s glasses were askew, and Iva was wearing some sort of house slippers…and they both carried worried and concerned expressions on their faces.

“Sit down Iva!” Gideon Senior yanked a chair over for them and propelled her into it. “You can see they’re all right now, so you can stop your yammering!”

Fiona saw that despite his harsh words, his attention raced over Gideon and herself to make sure they were, indeed, all right.

Trying to make light of the situation, she looked at Iva and grinned. “Reading Tarot cards now, are you?”

Iva flushed and looked down at her hands. “Well, I thought I’d give it a try. My first time, and since you were on my mind…and Gideon, and the whole situation…well, I just meditated on you and pulled a few cards.”

Gideon Senior rolled his eyes, smiling now that all was well. “Foolishness! Such foolishness I never heard, eh, Gideon? What are we going to do with these two women and their penchant for the mystic?”

Fiona felt Gideon shift beside her, and she looked to see a very sober expression on his face. “Grandfather, I have to say…I’m never going to poke fun at them again.” He hesitated, then glanced at Fiona and closed his mouth.

She took a quick look at Iva, who was watching intently, and then reached to touch Gideon’s face. “You saw her, didn’t you? Gretchen?”

He nodded and Iva gasped in what could only be described as disappointment. Gideon Senior gawked, his mouth hanging open. “What are you saying, son? You think you saw a ghost?”

Gideon bit his upper lip, raised one eyebrow as though he didn’t believe it himself, and nodded. “I saw a ghost.” He said the words and looked over at Fiona. “It was definitely Gretchen, and she looked just like you—except for the hair.”

“You
really
saw her?” Iva asked, her blue eyes perfectly round and her cheeks flushing in excitement. “What did she do? What did she look like? What happened?”

“She scared the bejesus out of Barnaby,” Gideon replied. “She was kind of greenish yellow, and she had a hell of a gust of wind behind her. It felt like a damned tornado in here. She broke a lot of lamps—a lot of things. I don’t know if it was the wind or just her…moving things.” He shook his head. “I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t experienced it for myself…but I did.” He looked into Fiona’s eyes with an uncertain gaze—as though he were afraid she’d laugh at him.

Before she could respond, a shout from one of the cops drew their attention. “Hey, did you see this mess over here?”

Fiona and Gideon pulled to their feet when they saw where he was standing—next to the big old desk where Gretchen’s Lamp had stood.

The old white lamp was no longer in its spot on the desk—now it lay smashed on the floor. “Right over here was the last crash I heard,” Gideon told Fiona as they stooped to look at what remained of the lamp. “Gretchen must have destroyed it as her last act.”

“What’s this?” Fiona reached for a wad of papers—a small notebook that had been folded in half and lay among the shards of milk glass. “It must have been inside the lamp.”

As soon as she pulled it out, the glass tinkling to the floor under it, she knew what it was. “Valente’s journal.” She and Gideon looked at each other. “That’s what Barnaby was looking for,” she told him. “And some bank books too.”

He took the journal and flipped through it. As she leaned over his shoulder, Fiona saw the brown spidery writing that had faded over time.

“I’m sure it tells the whole story in here,” she said. “It’ll say that he was Josef Kremer, one of Hitler’s elite, and that he came here to start a new life after the war.”

“And that his first love—Gretchen—found him, and when she came to visit him, he killed her for fear she’d divulge his identity. He actually killed the woman he loved—or at least had loved once upon a time.”

Gideon sat back on his heels and looked at Fiona, warmth shining in his eyes. “I just want you to know, my love, that no matter how long we’re married, and how angry you might make me…I’ll never bash your head in and leave you in a closet under the stairs.” He grinned a crooked, gentle grin.

Fiona felt a wave of love and tenderness as she fell into his gaze. She smiled, reaching to touch his warm, dear face. “Another joke from you, Gideon? Two in one day? Are you really the man I love, or are you an imposter?”

She leaned forward to press a kiss to his mouth, and felt like she’d come home. This was where she’d be, this was where she’d stay. Her home, her life, her commitment…her responsibility.  Lifelong love with this man.

“I love you Gideon. And if that’s a proposal, I’ll accept it…but you’re really going to have to stop making so many jokes.”

~*~*~

Now available

The Cards of Life and Death

by Colleen Gleason

featuring Fiona’s brother Ethan Tannock

~*~

A small-town summer romance spiced up with moonlit boat rides, handsome neighbors, and a haunted deck of Tarot cards....

Diana Iverson is a sharp, up and coming malpractice attorney with a logical, scientific mind and a handsome fiancé—until the rug is pulled out from under her feet and her life is upended.

When her crazy Aunt Belinda dies, leaving her a big old house in Maine along with a box of Tarot cards, Diana takes the opportunity for a summer get-away away from the rat-race of Boston and the painful memories there.

She doesn’t expect to meet up with Ethan Tannock, the handsome neighbor next door who seems to be some sort of eccentric ghost-buster—along with his big, black Labrador Retriever.

But when the old house becomes the scene of vandalism and a number of break-ins, and it begins to appear as if Aunt Belinda’s death was not as it seemed, Diana finds that life isn’t always black and white and filled with logic.