.

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