Obsession. Tori Carrington

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       4

      ONLY DREW HADN’T GUESSED he’d be drinking that tea alone.

      He lay back in his double bed staring at the whirling fan and the shadows playing across the ceiling. It was somewhere around 3:00 a.m., and in the room next to his the squeak of bedsprings had finally stopped along with the moaning he suspected was faked, but he couldn’t be sure.

      What he was sure about was that the sound of a couple having sex, albeit it professional sex, ratcheted up his own growing desire for the elusive hotel owner.

      He rubbed his forearm draped over his brow then sighed. It was hot. Hotter than he could remember it being for a long time. Or perhaps his keen awareness of it was due to the lack of air-conditioning.

      His gaze fixed again on the ceiling. But not to look at the shadows there. Instead, he tried to detect any more sounds from the room two floors above his. A room he assumed was Josie’s because when he’d been standing on the balcony over the hotel entrance, he had heard her lock up and shortly thereafter had followed the sound of her footfalls up the stairs. There had been no more customers. But earlier, at around midnight when he’d been sipping his tea—alone—in the open doorway, he’d watched as a walking tour of some sort had stopped in front of him and a guy in period clothing had outlined the happenings of a couple weeks ago. The nine or so tourists had stared at him and the hotel in awe. Then the guide had gone into a story that went back much farther than recent history, and had made the murder of Claire Laraway pale by comparison.

      “It’s said that Hotel Josephine is still haunted by the ghost of the original owner, Josephine Villefranche, who wanders the halls at night. Some say she seeks revenge for the wrongs done to her. Others say it’s a heart-wrenching attempt to find her lost love—the man who took her life during the fires of 1794.”

      Drew had saluted the group with his empty glass, then headed upstairs to his own room.

      He wondered how Josie felt about being associated with such notoriety.

      From somewhere in the hotel he heard a phone ring. He suspected it was the main phone. He looked up at the ceiling again, wondering how long it had been since Josie Villefranche had gotten a break from all the hotel’s demands.

      And wondering how he might convince her that was exactly what she wanted most in the world.

      JOSIE’S HAND STOPPED its rhythmic motion of smoothing lotion over her calf as she stared at the ringing telephone. While the city might never sleep, calls after eleven were rare. And given her recent experience with late-night calls, she wasn’t sure she wanted to answer this one.

      Still, she had three guests to consider. And, true to form, this late-night caller had no intention of giving up until she answered.

      On the eighth ring she slowly picked up the receiver.

      “Hello?”

      No response.

      She breathed a sigh of relief. They’d hung up.

      She was about to return the receiver to its cradle when a low, familiar voice asked, “Josie Villefranche?”

      Familiar not because she knew the owner of it. But because she’d heard it often in the past few months.

      “I know you’re there, Josie.”

      The caller was a man. That was all she knew. Well, that and the fact that his sole intent was to frighten her.

      “I hear the murdered girl’s ghost is still in room 2D, Josie.”

      Since the calls had begun long before Claire Laraway’s murder, she had never linked the two.

      Until now…

      “She wants some company.”

      “Who is this?”

      But she knew her whispered inquiry would go unanswered.

      Instead she heard an eerie chuckle. “Good night, Josie. Sleep well.”

      Then the line went dead.

      Josie slowly hung up the receiver, her blood flowing thickly through her veins. She rose from the wrought-iron chair her grandmother had given her as part of a vanity set when she was fourteen and moved toward the open French doors, looking into the dark night beyond the lights of Bourbon Street.

      When she’d received the first call some months ago, she’d assumed it might be someone who had once stayed at the hotel who was playing an awful prank. But when the calls continued, with no pattern that she could make out, a deep sense of dread and fear had pierced her initial nonchalance, leaving her creeped out for a long while afterward.

      Could the caller be Claire Laraway’s killer? Is that what all this had been leading up to? Was there some sicko out there who had targeted her for some sort of demented plan and was even now playing it out?

      A sound caught her attention. She jumped then looked down to find that Drew Morrison had stepped out onto his balcony two floors below, his slacks hanging low on his hips, his well-defined torso bare. Had the ringing phone awakened him? Or was he, like her, incapable of sleep just now?

      She didn’t realize that he’d looked up and spotted her until he said something.

      “Is everything all right?”

      Josie grew aware of her faraway thoughts and the expression she might be wearing as a result of her disturbing midnight caller.

      “Yes… I’m fine.” She crossed her arms to ward off a shiver. “Is there anything else you need?”

      She caught the way he scanned her body. She wore a light slip that clung to her damp skin and left very little to the imagination. The intensity of his gaze made her nipples tighten beneath the silky material.

      If there was one thing she’d learned very young, it was how to read a man’s expression. And the expression Drew wore told her that he did, indeed, want something, if not need it. And that something was her.

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