Immortal Bride
She had been knocked over the head and dumped into the lake. The icy water had shocked her into consciousness, and she had fought hard against the hands holding her beneath the water. His hands. She had clawed and kicked, trying to free herself. But then the water had filled her lungs, and she had lost her strength and consciousness again. She’d sunk deep to the bottom of the lake that legend claimed was bottomless. Because no one had ever reached such depths…and lived.
And this time, neither would he…
She cut through the water until she found him. He had changed direction now, kicking toward the surface, unwilling to dive as deep as he had sent her, as he had consigned her for eternity. And she reached out, manacling her fingers around his ankle.
This was the revenge she had wanted, she reminded herself, as doubts assailed her. This was what he deserved for what he had done to her. An eye for an eye…
A life for a life…
But he hadn’t taken just one.
Lungs burning with oxygen deprivation, Damien fought his way toward the surface—toward air. But something caught his foot, wrapping around his ankle and pulling him down. Above him lightning flashed, illuminating the lake and those precious feet that separated him from the surface.
What the hell had he been thinking to leap into the Lake of Tears after an apparition? She couldn’t be real. God, he was losing his mind. And now maybe his life…
He kicked with one foot, the other still caught. Something cold, but which paradoxically heated his blood, wound tight around his ankle, trapping him beneath the water. Panic pressed against his chest, adding to the constriction from lack of oxygen. He had to stay calm if he intended to stay alive.
But hell, what was the point of fighting, of living, when he had nothing for which—for whom—to live?
But he was a Gray—a Gray Wolf, actually, before his ancestors had dropped their surname. And through history Grays had always been fierce warriors. Damien could not stop fighting because he didn’t know how; it was too much a part of his nature, the very essence of who and what he was.
Summoning the last of his energy, as unconsciousness threatened, his vision growing black, he turned in the water, diving down to see on what he was caught.
And he saw her. Pale—almost translucent—fingers wrapped around his ankle, trapping him under the water.
Why?
Her face lifted toward his, and their gazes met. Those pale blue eyes, which had once shone with love whenever she’d looked at him, were now hard and cold with hatred.
“Why?” he mouthed the word at her. And as he did, the last of his air left his lungs and his world went black, swallowing her ghostly image from his sight as the Lake of Tears swallowed his body.
The ancient ghost of an Indian shaman stood on the rocky slope, where he had died centuries ago, before a sorceress’s tears had filled the deep ravineand formed the lake. And he watched and waited, hoping that this time the Gray Wolf warrior would not rise from the depths of the abyss and live….
Chapter 2
Head pounding like the beat of an ancient war drum, Damien crept back to consciousness. His skin stung as the icy chill receded, chased away by the warmth of a blazing fire and a scratchy wool blanket. He knocked the blanket aside as he lifted his hand and pushed his shaking fingers through his still-damp hair.
“It was real,” he murmured, his throat raspy with shock and cold.
“It was stupid,” a deep voice grumbled as a man kicked shut the door of the small cabin and dropped chunks of wood onto the floor near the mammoth stone fireplace. “What the hell, man? What were you thinking?”
“Nathan…” Damien recognized the rough-hewn pine boards of the ceiling and the log walls of his cousin’s cabin. The structure in the woods was even older than the house sitting on the rocky edge of the Lake of Tears. “You pulled me out?”
“Again,” Nathan said.
He had been there last time—six months ago. He had dragged Damien, kicking and swinging, from the water and convinced him it was pointless to search for Olivia. He hadn’t even known for certain that she’d drowned.
But Damien had found her robe and her shoes on the rocky shore. And he had guessed where she’d been.
And tonight, he knew for certain. She hadn’t run off as Nathan had tried to convince him she had.
She was dead.
“You were there,” Damien said as he pushed himself up, bracing his elbow on the arm of the couch on which he lay. “Again…”
“Lucky for you,” Nathan said.
For a man who made his living gambling, Damien was actually remarkably unfortunate—in love. “Yeah, lucky for me…”
His cousin turned to him, his dark gaze penetrating. “Were you trying…to kill yourself?”
“God, no.” But Olivia had tried to kill him. Why? Had she only grown to hate him that much after her death, or had she hated him before? Had her love been a lie?
“Then what the hell were you doing out there, in the lake,” Nathan demanded to know with anger and concern, “in the middle of a storm?”
Head still pounding, Damien winced at the volume of his cousin’s voice, and the memory of what had compelled him to risk the storm and the icy water of the Lake of Tears.
Her…
Not willing yet to share what—who—he had seen, he asked instead, “What were you doing out in the storm?”
“My job. I’m the caretaker here,” Nathan reminded him. “Your caretaker.”
Damien suspected his cousin didn’t refer to the fact that Nathan worked for him but that he was worried about him, about how he’d been living, actually barely living, since Olivia had disappeared nearly six months ago.
“If you weren’t trying to kill yourself,” Nathan persisted, “what the hell were you doing? You know the lake is bottomless. Some of our ancestors believed it to be the portal to the other world.”
“Hell,” Damien uttered the word as more than a curse, as a destiny. He should have known better than to think he could ever find happiness. “Hell is where this place always sends me. I never should have brought her here—not after—”
“She wanted to come. You told me that,” Nathan remembered. The man never forgot anything, nothing from his lifetime or from the lifetimes of the ancestors who had lived before him and Damien. “You said she wanted to spend your honeymoon here in the house on the lake.”
And like a damn fool Damien had wanted to give her everything she wanted. “I should have told her no.”
“But it was where you met….”
The first time he’d seen her had been on the rocky shore of the Lake of Tears. For years he had hated coming to the Victorian house on the lake, and he had only visited when absolutely necessary to meet with Nathan. If not for his cousin, he would have sold the estate long ago. But Nathan had convinced him it was Damien’s legacy and that he was honor bound by their people to care for the lake and the property.
Damien had been cutting around the lake, heading to the woods and Nathan’s cabin, when he’d come upon her standing on the rocky shore. Even then he hadn’t believed that she was real; she was far too beautiful to be simply human.
The summer wind played with her hair, whipping platinum-blond locks across her face and around her shoulders. She wore a linen vest, sleeveless and low cut that revealed the shadow between her breasts, and pants in the same pale blue of her eyes. The wind molded the linen to her curves, revealing more than it covered.
“You are the most beautiful trespasser I’ve ever had,” Damien remarked with an appreciative whistle, drawing her from her contemplation of the lake.
Startled, she jumped and then turned toward him. And her eyes widened with surprise and something close to recognition, as if she knew him even though they had never met before.
The same sense of recognition jarred him. She looked like a legend, the spitting image of the woman whose story had been passed from generation to generation in his family. She looked like the woman whose tears over her murdered lover had created the lake. And whose supernatural ability to resurrect the dead had brought the Indian warrior—whose mission had been to kill her—back to life. A life they had shared on the rocky shore of the Lake of Tears.
“I’m not trespassing,” she insisted, her chin lifting with pride and indignation.
Because the land had been hers first?
He shook his head, shaking off the fanciful thought he blamed on his cousin’s fascination with the past. If not for his having to visit Nathan, Damien would not have even thought of the legend. But he wouldn’t have met this woman, either. And, as a shiver of foreboding lifted the hair on the nape of his neck, he considered that not meeting her might have been a good thing. With a flash of prophecy to which he would never admit, he sensed that his life was about to change…because of her.
“Then what the hell are you doing on my property?” he asked, growling the question as he did when he wanted to intimidate someone.
She didn’t lower her chin. She only narrowed her eyes and met his hard stare, unintimidated. “I’m checking out the wedding package.”
“Wedding package?” He repeated her ridiculous excuse, almost disappointed that she hadn’t come up with something more plausible.
“Yes, wedding package,” she insisted. “The ad described it as a wedding ceremony on the shore of the beautiful Lake of Tears, performed by a real Indian shaman. And the reception in the dining room of the house.” She gestured toward the Victorian on the hill. “And a honeymoon in the bridal suite in the second story of the turret.”
Damien’s breath caught with a stabbing pain in his chest. Damn, now he knew why Nathan had insisted on a meeting. He’d hatched another of his hairbrained schemes. But this one…
How could his cousin have ever considered opening up the lake and the house to the public a good idea? How could he think Damien would go along with such a thing…? How would reducing their heritage to a reception hall honor their legacy, their people?
“Are you all right?” she asked.
Her question surprised him. In all of his thirty-six years, he had never met anyone, besides his cousin, who had been able to read his moods. Not even his wife, despite all the years they’d known each other, had ever really understood him.
“I’m fine,” he said, “just trying to figure out if you’re lying….”
Or if all the years of Nathan drinking the potions he concocted from the plants and flowers growing wild on the land had finally reduced him to madness…
Again the indignation flashed in her light-blue eyes. “I am not lying.”
“But why would you be checking out wedding packages—” he was going to kill Nathan; all the shaman’s herbs and roots and potions were not going to save him from Damien’s rage “—when you’re not wearing a ring?” He stepped close, caught her hand in his and held up her bare fingers.
God, her skin was silky…
“I gave the engagement ring back to my fiancé—my ex-fiancé.” She expelled a ragged breath and lifted her gaze to Damien’s. “But now…I don’t know….”
At the thought of her wearing another man’s ring, Damien tensed and tightened his grasp on her hand. “But you had some doubts….”
She nodded. “I’m not sure they were really my doubts, though, or…”
“If you had any doubts, you did the right thing,” he assured her, “by returning his ring.”
He’d had doubts, and now he wished like hell he hadn’t ignored them. But Melanie had fallen for him when he’d been a poor Indian kid on a college scholarship with nothing else to his name. And then she’d stuck by him through all those long, empty days and nights while he had been working to establish his career. Guilt gripped him, as it always did, when he acknowledged that he hadn’t been there for her when she had needed him most.
The blond-haired woman tugged at her hand, trying to free it from his. But instead of releasing her, he entwined their fingers. “So since you don’t intend to use the wedding package, you’re here under false pretences,” he pointed out. “You are trespassing.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked, her voice soft with challenge. “Call the sheriff?”
Even if the nearby village of Grayson had an active sheriff, calling him wouldn’t have been Damien’s first inclination. His first inclination of how to handle his beautiful trespasser had his blood pumping faster through his veins…in anticipation.
He shook his head. “Nope. My land. My law.”
“Hmmm…” she mused, pursing her full lips, “I don’t remember that law being on the bar exam.”
“Did you pass?” he asked, his tone doubtful even though he believed she would not have brought up the exam if she hadn’t passed.
Her chin rose a little higher with pride and a touch of arrogance that intrigued him as much as her beauty did. “First time.”
“So you’re smart and beautiful,” he concluded.
“Brilliant,” she bragged with a self-deprecating grin that mocked her own ego.
“And modest,” he teased.
She shrugged those sexy bare shoulders. “I don’t have time for modesty.”
“In that case maybe you decided to trespass in order to skinny-dip in the lake. So don’t let me stop you.” He released her hand but reached for the buttons on her vest.
She grabbed his wrists, her breath coming fast through her parted lips. “Don’t! Don’t—”
“Oh, would you rather I go first?” He stepped back and pulled his shirt over his head, dropping the black cashmere onto the rocky shore.
Her eyes wide, she stared at his chest. “I—I—uh…” she stammered then slid the tip of her pink tongue across her bottom lip.
“I hope you’re more eloquent than that in court.” He reached for his belt.
“Don’t!” she yelled again. “Don’t take off anything else. I’m not here to skinny-dip.”
“Or for a wedding,” he reminded her. Because the Lake of Tears would become a wedding spot only over his dead body.
“I’m here because I’m curious about the lake,” she admitted. But she didn’t so much as glance at the water, her attention still focused on his bare chest.
“So let me satisfy your curiosity.” He stepped closer and she jerked her gaze to his face.
“A-about the lake,” she stammered.
“Of course. About the lake,” he agreed, unable to keep a grin from his mouth. “What do you want to know?”
“You don’t want to put your shirt back on?” she asked, her voice soft and wistful.
He shook his head. “It’s hot.”
“No, it’s not,” she protested, shivering in the light summer breeze.
“You’re from the Lower Peninsula,” he surmised. “Downstate.”
“Detroit.”
He would have guessed. She had an urban air about her—one of glamour and sophistication. All the things he had fought so hard to become she had probably been born.
“I’m thinking about moving up here, though,” she shared, her gaze watchful as if she cared what he thought.
“To get away from the ex?” he asked, wondering about her broken engagement.
“To be here.” She gestured toward the lake. “Somehow I think I belong here. I know that probably sounds crazy….”
What was crazy was the way she made him feel—as if she belonged with him.
“I don’t even know your name,” he realized.
“Olivia Kingston.” She held out her hand.
Instead of shaking, he lifted it to his mouth and brushed his lips across her knuckles. She shivered again.
“And you are?” she asked.
“Your destiny,” he answered her.
She smiled. “Apparently I’m not the only one who doesn’t have time for modesty.”
He didn’t have time for a lot of things—actually for anything or anyone outside the casinos he ran throughout Michigan. But yet something about her compelled him to make time…for her. “I’m Damien Gray.”
She laughed. “Of course you are. No wonder you don’t have time for modesty.” Her laughter evaporated like water on the hot rocks. “And you don’t have time for my questions, either. I’m sorry to have bothered you….”
She stepped forward as if she intended to move around him and head up the hill to the house and the street beyond it. But he caught her, wrapping his hand around her bare arm. Goose bumps rose on her skin beneath his palm.
“You have bothered me,” he admitted, resenting how she had opened up his world to possibilities again. “But you’re going to bother me more if you leave now.” Because then he would never know what might have become of those possibilities.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for me stay,” she said, and for the first time fear flickered in her eyes.
“Why?” he asked, lowering his voice. “Afraid I might talk you into skinny-dipping?”
Her gaze slid over his bare chest again, and with a heavy sigh, she confessed, “I’m afraid you might talk me into all kinds of things.”
Later, after he’d told her Gray Wolf and Anya’s legend of the Lake of Tears, he had talked her into skinny-dipping.
Playing naked in the water with her that day had been a far cry from tonight—when she had tried to kill him.
“Hey!” Nathan shouted, snapping his fingers in Damien’s face. “Are you all right?”
Pushing back his memories, Damien focused on his cousin and nodded. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine…”
Nathan studied him, clearly unconvinced. “I thought I lost you again.”
“No, I’m here,” Damien assured him. “Thanks to you.” His breath shuddered out in a ragged sigh. “Thanks for pulling me out.”
During the summers they had spent at the Lake of Tears, staying with their grandfather in the old Victorian, which had been pretty dilapidated then, he and Nathan had grown as close as brothers. Nathan had always been there for him, even after Damien, as the oldest grandson, had inherited the house and the lake when their grandfather passed. Nathan had loved and understood the land and the legend more than Damien ever would. But maybe that was why he didn’t care that he didn’t own the estate; his job as caretaker was more important.
“So what the hell happened tonight?” Nathan asked, dropping onto the wooden crate that served as his coffee table. “Tell me what’s going on with you.”
Damien grimaced at the persistent pounding inside his head. Stalling, he pushed a hand through his hair again. “I wish to hell I knew.”
“Well, what brought you out of the house during the storm?” Nathan asked, speaking softly and slowly as if he feared his cousin had lost his mind.
Damien drew in a deep breath. God, it was bad enough he thought he was crazy, but to share what had happened with anyone else…
But then no one else would understand like Nathan, who claimed to be able to see a ghost himself, of a long-dead shaman who served as his spirit guide, advising him in using the plants and flowers that grew wild on the land. Only on this land.
“I’ve been seeing her,” he admitted.
“Who?” Nathan asked, his brows arched. “You’re dating someone?”
The thought of seeing someone besides Olivia struck Damien like a spear through the heart. He couldn’t betray her. But tonight, tugging him under, she had done more than betray him.
“I’ve been seeing Olivia….”
Nathan stilled, his body tense. “She’s come back to the Lake of Tears?”
Damien shook his head. “No, she never left.”
“Then I don’t understand…. If you’re so convinced she’s dead, how could you…” He trailed off, his mouth dropping open in surprise. “You think you’ve seen her ghost?”
Damien released a ragged breath. “I wasn’t sure. Over the past six months, I’ve been catching glimpses of something down by the lake.” A wisp of smoke when the sky was clear. An orb of sunlight when the sky was dark. But tonight she had taken shape, the same gorgeous shape she’d had when she lived. “Of someone…”
“So now you’re sure?” Nathan asked, his voice guarded as if he was still unconvinced.
But Damien had no doubts. “Yes.”
His cousin’s brow furrowed. “I don’t understand. Why would she come back?”
The pounding in Damien’s head repeated in his heart, which ached as he recalled the look in her eyes as she had trapped him underwater—that look of utter hatred. “To kill me.”
Shock widened Nathan’s eyes. “What?”
“She tried to kill me tonight.”
“In the lake?” His cousin shook his head. “Damien, that doesn’t make sense. A spirit can’t touch you, can’t hurt you…”
“I felt her.” He swallowed hard. His skin tingled yet from where she had clutched his ankle. “I felt her fingers around my ankle. I felt her. She wasn’t real—she wasn’t human—but she was. You know what I mean?”
His expression guarded, Nathan replied, “I know you’ve been under a lot of stress since she disappeared.”
“You think I’m going crazy?”
His cousin’s gaze dropped away from his. “I know you were crazy in love with Olivia, even more than you ever loved Melanie.”
Catching the censure in Nathan’s tone, Damien struggled to explain. “Melanie was my friend. She was faithful. She stuck by me.”
“You talk about her like she was a dog,” Nathan remarked, his voice sharp with resentment. With all the time Melanie had spent alone at the lake while Damien worked, she had grown close to his cousin.
“She’d been a part of my life for so long,” Damien said. “She was important to me.”
“Not as important as Olivia.”
“Olivia was my fate.” Maybe he shouldn’t have fought tonight. Maybe he should have succumbed to his fate. “She was my destiny.” And he should have told her that while she was alive; he should have opened up his heart to her and truly gave her the everything he had promised her on their wedding night. “Surely you can understand that, Nathan.”
“I understand that you need to get away from here,” the shaman counseled him, as he counseled so many of the townspeople.
But the difference was that the townspeople believed. Even after tonight, after seeing a ghost himself, Damien struggled to accept otherworldly powers or abilities.
Nathan stood up and returned to the fire, staring into the flames. “You need to get back to work.”
“I go to work.”
“What? A few times a week? Your job used to consume your life. You need to let it consume you again,” Nathan advised, “before she does.”
Damien didn’t bother telling his cousin that it was already too late. If Nathan were really a shaman, he knew.
Olivia consumed him. Thoughts of her haunted him day and night. And now her ghost haunted him.
“Can’t you help me?” Damien asked. “This—spirits—that’s your thing, your area of expertise.”
Nathan chuckled. “So you believe me now? You must be desperate.”
“I am,” Damien admitted, knowing he deserved his cousin’s derision. He had treated him to more than enough of his disbelief over the years, when he’d been unable to accept that Nathan had any special abilities. But Nathan had never been offended, not even when Damien had raged at him over his plans to perform weddings on the shore of the Lake of Tears—where Nathan had married him and Melanie and where she had died years later on the rocky hill above the lake. Damien had been furious, and Nathan had apologized, respecting Damien’s wishes to keep the tragedy private.
Nathan had always understood and, Damien suspected, pitied him for not being able to believe in the magic of the land the young shaman considered sacred and of the special abilities of their people—of him.
“Can’t you help me?” he implored his cousin.
Nathan shook his head. “I wish there was some drink I could make you. Some talisman I could give you. But even I can’t find a cure for a broken heart, man.”
“You think that’s what’s going on with me? You don’t think I really saw her tonight?”
His cousin shrugged. “I don’t know, Damien. You’ve never seen anything before, and this land is alive with the energy of the spirits of all our ancestors who passed. Why would you see only her?”
“Because I love her.” Even now, even after what she’d done tonight.
Nathan nodded. “And because of that, you don’t want to let her go.”