Reawakened Passions

Reawakened Passions
Megan Hart

The faint scent of lilac in the air, the far-off tinkle of a music box, doors that won't stay shut.Melissa Benjamin likes to think the strange happenings at The Valencia add character to the apartments. And when a tall, reserved and seriously sexy new tenant moves into 1-B, there's even more to like. Jonathan Adams helps send spirits trapped in this world onto the next, but he finds more than he bargained for in the haunted old building.He doesn't see ghosts, he feels them, and shares their memories of pleasure. Whoever he's sharing his apartment with wants Mel almost as much as Jon does and will go through Jon to have her.

The faint scent of lilac in the air, the far-off tinkle of a music box, doors that won’t stay shut… Melissa Benjamin likes to think the strange happenings at The Valencia add character to the apartments. And when a tall, reserved and seriously sexy new tenant moves into 1-B, there’s even more to like.

Jonathan Adams helps send spirits trapped in this world onto the next, but he finds more than he bargained for in the haunted old building. He doesn’t see ghosts, he feels them—and shares their memories of pleasure. Whoever he’s sharing his apartment with wants Mel almost as much as Jon does—and will go through Jon to have her….

Reawakened Passions

Megan Hart

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

Chapter 1

Melissa Benjamin had grown used to the lingering scent of lilac. The first few months after she’d moved into this apartment, a nice big one on the third floor of The Valencia, she’d driven herself crazy trying to figure out where the smell was coming from. No lilac bushes planted outside. No spilled bottles of perfume or fabric softener, no forgotten melted candles tucked away in any of the closets or cupboards. Just the pervasive and intermittently lingering scent of those purple flowers. It reminded Mel of her grandmother, a sort of powdery, old-lady scent, and that was nice. Much better than her last apartment, anyway, which had often reeked of the neighbor’s greasy cooking and weed habit. She’d given up trying to figure out where the smell came from, or what triggered it. In fact, most of the time, she barely noticed it.

The music was a little harder to ignore.

It had woken her just now, the soft, tinkling sounds that reminded her of a music box. The kind you wound with a small key. A jewelry box with a ballerina inside who spun on one toe when you opened the lid.

Mel opened her eyes into the dark, her blankets a warm comfort against the chill of an early spring night. She’d snuggled down deep, one ear pressed firmly into the softness of her pillow, the other covered by the comforter pulled up over her eyes. Both the pillow and the comforter blocked a lot of errant noise, which made the music box tune harder to hear, and because she’d grown as used to it as she had the smell of lilac, at first she didn’t do anything but close her eyes again and wish for sleep. After a few seconds though, when the music didn’t stop, she turned onto her back.

The music was never loud or raucous. It was always the same tune. “Au Claire de la Lune,” she thought it was, though sometimes it stopped after so few notes she couldn’t be sure. It always sounded sort of faint and far away, yet every time, it managed to wake her up as quickly as if someone had whispered her name directly into her ear. Mel listened now, waiting for the song to die away into the darkness and let her get back to sleep.

This time, it didn’t. The song started up again, slightly louder. A little faster. Almost as if someone had rewound the music box.

Blinking, Mel sat up in bed. “Hello?”

She knew it was silly to call out into the dark that way. If it were a burglar messing around in her living room with some random music box that didn’t exist, he’d hardly be likely to answer her. And if it wasn’t something human, if it really was indeed the ghost she’d joked about since moving in, well…did she really want to hear a reply?

Just as the smell of lilac had never irritated her, the late-night music box tunes had never scared her. Sitting up in her bed now though, not even a speck of light coming in through the window because she’d pulled the blackout shade before she went to bed, it was all too easy for Mel to imagine a skeletal hand reaching… reaching…

When her alarm went off, she screamed. Loud. Bloodcurdlingly loud. She also nearly levitated off the bed before she swatted at her phone in the speaker dock. She grabbed it, sliding a finger across the screen to silence the soft sounds she’d programmed to wake her. By the time the alarm shut off, the other music had stopped too.

Heart pounding, she sat cradling her phone next to her until the screen went dark. She could make out a few shadows in the room—the corner of her dresser, heaped high with laundry she meant to put away. Her closet door that refused to stay shut. The outline of her bedroom door, open a crack.

Hadn’t she gone to sleep with it closed? Living alone, Mel had gotten into the habit of locking not only the front door to her apartment but also the back door that led down the service stairs to the basement. She also slept with her bedroom door shut tight, though not locked.

It was definitely open now. She could see the glow from the nightlight in the bathroom down the hall. Carefully, stealthily, Mel slipped out of bed and tiptoed to the door. She listened.

Nothing.

She pulled open the door just enough to press her ear to the crack. Still nothing.

Seconds later, the bathroom door down the hall rattled and shut with a loud snap. Mel let out the breath she’d been holding and stepped back to open her door all the way. She laughed.

The wind.

The Valencia had a weird central shaft down the middle of the building. All the apartments had windows, frosted glass for privacy, overlooking it. One of the other residents had told her it was for light and it was true, the bathroom did have a lot of natural light she appreciated, but it also made the whole building drafty.

Her pounding heart slowed. Shaking her head, Mel padded to the bathroom and started the shower as she brushed her teeth. She’d left the window cracked open, which explained the draft, and she peeked out into the shaft. You couldn’t open these interior windows more than an inch or so, just enough to get some air but not enough to peep at your neighbors. You could hear a lot, though. Conversations. The television. Music. She listened hard now, concentrating past the rush and roar of her shower, but heard nothing. Certainly not the jangle of a music box.

But when she got out of the shower fifteen minutes later, she definitely smelled lilac.

It was an old building.

Why had he chosen an old building? Why hadn’t he learned his lesson? Jonathan Adams hated old buildings. He could’ve rented a place in one of those new complexes. A boxy, impersonal apartment without character, with a rent three times as high, justified by the “amenities.” A gym in the basement he’d never use and on-site security that would be worthless at protecting him. He’d toured a few of those. Had been ready to put down his security deposit and move right in.

Instead, he’d chosen The Valencia.

Jon hadn’t always hated old buildings—hell, once upon a time he’d made his living fixing them up. Taking something old and broken and making it new again. Beautiful.

This building was already beautiful. Age-worn, in need of a few cosmetic repairs here and there but overall in good structural shape, The Valencia had been built in 1924 and hadn’t changed much since. Three floors, two big apartments on each floor. Inlaid tiles, carved wood, balconies. He’d passed this building a few times every week for the past five years and never been so much as tempted to stand on the front porch, and here he was, all moved in on the ground floor in an apartment that hadn’t been empty for more than a month.

Luck or fate or something with a heavier hand had led him here. His old landlord had decided to raise the rent by an amount more than Jonathan wanted to afford. The former tenant of 1-B here had retired and moved to Florida. Jon knew the building’s owner through a friend of a friend. Recommendations and a hefty security deposit, along with the first and last months’ rent, bypassed the list, and here Jon was.

But why?

That’s what he couldn’t figure out. Why had he done this to himself, when he knew what it would be like?

Jon looked around at the stack of boxes, the furniture out of place. He didn’t have much. His last place had been a lot smaller. Lower ceilings, smaller rooms, nothing nice like the floor-to-ceiling windows or bookcases in the living room…

He saw it first out of the corner of his eye. Just a flicker. Not a shadow, more like a flashbulb going off, capturing a photo of an object moving so fast it blurred. He didn’t turn to stare. He didn’t have to. He already knew what it was.

Still, he said nothing as he shoved his couch in front of the window and the TV stand against the wall across from it. Nor when he saw it again as he set up his iPod in the dock to play some music while he connected all the wires and cords on his flat-screen and set up his internet router. Not even when he went to the bedroom to make up the bed with sheets and blankets, ready for the night’s sleep.

But when he hopped in the shower to rinse away the sweat of a hard day’s move, that was it. “Go. Away.”

Jon kept his voice steady, even. Nonaccusatory. With his eyes full of shampoo and the hot water pounding down all around him, he couldn’t see or hear anything, but then he didn’t have to. He could sense it like a tickle of fingers across his skin, raising the hairs on the back of his neck and tightening his balls. His toes curled a little, the way they would if he’d touched something electric and got a shock. He opened his mouth to rinse away the metallic tingle, but it didn’t help much. Even a few minutes later, standing at the sink with his mouth full of toothpaste suds, he could still taste it.

“I mean it, buddy,” Jon said conversationally, addressing the drain in the sink rather than the mirror because hell, he’d just moved in and wanted to have at least a few hours of peace before dealing with this. “Go away, or I’ll make you go away.”

The low, guttural reply might’ve been the wind soughing through the window overlooking the building’s central courtyard. The flicker of movement behind him, reflected in the mirror, might’ve been his own shadow or the shower curtain blowing from that same wind. But Jon knew better. The presence behind him, moving closer, was one pissed-off spirit, and it wasn’t going to rest until he or it was gone.

Jon spat and rinsed, spat again. It had been hiding the day he came to look at the apartment, though of course he’d sensed the residual energy a haunting left behind. But here it was now, out in full force. This was the reason why he’d been unable to resist this place. This spirit behind him, getting stronger by the second.

Jonathan swallowed water from his mug and set it carefully on the shelf next to the sink. He turned, braced for the sight of a ghostly figure, but saw only the toilet and the shelf he’d yet to fill with all his toiletries. His threat hadn’t sent it away for long. If it wanted to be gone permanently, it would’ve already been, and long ago, based on the feelings he was getting from it. This guy had been around for a long, long time.

Most of the time, spirits caught on this plane were eager to leave it. Not lingering on purpose, just confused or trapped, mostly because their passing had been abrupt or violent. People who passed in peace usually had no trouble letting go of this world and moving on, though occasionally he came across one who’d stayed out of concern for one reason or another. A loved one, a beloved pet, an unpaid debt. Those were biggies, the ones who thought they couldn’t move on until they’d settled something. Sometimes it was something like a simple message. “Tell Mary I left the money under the mattress,” that sort of thing. Other times it was flat-out revenge.

And sometimes it wasn’t that they couldn’t go, Jon thought as he went down the hall to his new bedroom, the biggest of the three in the apartment, and pulled a pair of flannel pajama bottoms from the drawer. Sometimes they just refused.

This guy felt like one of those. Hanging around to cause havoc on purpose because he was so angry that even years hadn’t dimmed his fury. There was no telling what had made him like that, but Jon would’ve bet anything it had to do with love. Or rather lust, that tricky emotion that could masquerade as love while driving you crazier than real love ever would.

Slipping into bed, Jon punched the pillows a few times to get settled, then stared up at the ceiling. He’d taken a few days off for this move. He didn’t have to work tomorrow. So of course he wasn’t tired. He counted the minutes ticking past in his head. He counted sheep, and sleep, that fickle bitch, didn’t even tickle his balls. He slowed his breathing, in through the nose. Out through the mouth. It was a meditative habit, though he wasn’t in the habit of meditating.

Finally, the lines blurred between the real world and dreams. Relieved, Jon let himself go limp and loose, giving up to unconsciousness. Some people felt as if they were falling in these moments and jerked themselves awake. Some heard someone calling their names. Jon, on the other hand, felt someone slap him across the face.