It was her. The woman he’d seen in the attic, and on the garden path. And again in his own bedroom.
There was no way he could be mistaken about that face.
She was, quite simply, gorgeous. Her glossy, dark hair was shaped into a soft upsweep that framed her delicate, fair-skinned face. Dark, expressive eyes. Perfectly formed nose. A chin that hinted of willfulness. Her mouth was a perfect bow, lips slightly parted.
Even in the faded, monochromatic photograph, he could sense her sparkle, her vitality. Her eyes gleamed with a real, lifelike twinkle.
Just the way they’d looked when he’d seen her three times before.
“Dean?” Mae asked, moving quickly toward him.
Though he heard her, he couldn’t seem to respond to his aunt. All his concentration was still centered on the photograph.
Reluctantly, he dragged his gaze from the woman in the picture and looked at her brother.
Brother? He frowned, wondering where that thought had come from. For all he knew, they could have been husband and wife. But, no. They looked too much alike. Eerily alike. Brother and sister, he would bet on it.
Twins, most likely.
Dean studied the young man’s somber, rather piercing dark eyes, straight nose, lean cheeks and firm, strong chin. There was a hint of a temper in the rather arrogant set of his head.
A few generations earlier, he might have been an Old West outlaw, or a cool, daring lawman. In modern times, he could be a valued member of an organized-crime family—or a maverick cop. He had that dangerous look that indicated either a complete disregard for the law or a grim determination to make sure others adhered to it.
Bootlegger. Murderer. Thinking of the tale Sharyn had told, Dean wondered now if it had all been true.
“Dean?” Mae repeated, placing a hand on his arm. “Are you all right? You’ve gone pale.”
“I—er—sorry, I got distracted,” he managed to say, still looking at the photograph.
“It’s them, isn’t it? I’ve found the only photo of the twins,” Mae said. “I thought it was, but I wanted to see if you agreed.”
“It certainly could be the Cameron twins,” Dean admitted. How could he have seen her? Had the woman he’d seen been an uncannily similar-looking descendant of Mary Anna Cameron? Or—
He swallowed.
/> “Dean, are you sure you’re feeling well? You really don’t look so good,” Mae fretted.
For just a moment, he considered telling her. About the first sighting in the attic. The cold feeling on the pathway, followed by his second encounter with the figure, and his conclusion that he’d been the victim of a joke. The woman’s whispered plea in the middle of the night in his bedroom.
He rejected the impulse almost immediately. This wasn’t something he could talk about. Not yet, anyway. “I’m fine, Aunt Mae. I’d better get upstairs and check on the carpenters.”
He handed the photograph back to her with a reluctance he didn’t quite understand. He was aware that his aunt was watching him with a mixture of bewilderment and concern as he abruptly left the room.
DEAN HARDLY TOUCHED his dinner that evening. Too restless to read or watch television, and knowing he would never get to sleep if he tried turning in early, he made his excuses to his aunt and went into the garden, where he paced, muttered and tried to figure out what the hell had been happening to him.
He still hadn’t completely abandoned the possibility that he’d been the victim of a joke. Even if the photograph really was of the Cameron twins—and he had every reason to assume that it was—that didn’t mean the long-dead Mary Anna Cameron had been popping out of her spectral plane, or whatever, to visit him. He lived in an age of computer-generated magic, a decade when movie actors could play scenes with dead historical figures, when special effects had to be pretty damned amazing to be truly special.
But would anyone in tiny Destiny, Arkansas, be skilled enough to bring to life a seventy-five-year-old photograph? And if so, why pull such a complicated hoax on Dean without at least taking credit for the stunt?
He turned to pace in the other direction, away from the inn this time. It was a cold night, and he burrowed into his leather jacket, his hands deep in the pockets. His cheeks were chilled, his nose a bit numb and his breath hung in ghostly little clouds ahead of him, eerily illuminated by the three-quarter moon overhead. He ignored the minor discomforts, still too restless to go back inside. Unwilling to face his aunt’s worriedly questioning eyes.
He wanted to be alone.
But, suddenly, he wasn’t.
“Hell,” he muttered when the woman stood in front of him on the path, primly smoothing her long white skirts.
She cocked an eyebrow. “A gentleman doesn’t curse in front of a lady,” she commented, and though her voice sounded a bit muffled, as though coming from farther away than she appeared, he could hear her quite clearly this time.