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That was why the dream he'd had bothered him.
It hadn't been sexual. Nor had it been in her house.
"Yeah, I had a dream. Not the same one as before though, so it must have just been some jumbled thoughts cramming together." She rolled over and snuggled closer to him. "We were in some house I didn't recognize. It was kind of dirty in the living room, and there was no furniture, just a card table and a bare artificial Christmas tree. Who knows where my mind pulled that all from, but it's probably pure exhaustion." She kissed him, her tongue sliding along his bottom lip. "You wear me out."
Ian would have liked to give that kiss and her innuendo the response she was clearly asking for, but he was too unnerved. "Bree, I had the same dream. It was the same house you're describing. There was some woman there I've never seen in my life, and I could swear you and I were actually upset with each other. What the hell could we have been doing?"
It had been as vivid and real as his more pleasant sexual dreams, only in this one, instead of the scent of Bree's perfume, he had smelled the mustiness of a house that had been empty. He'd seen the dust on the floor, felt the cold of a room that was only being minimally heated. He'd known the sharp agony of Bree's disapproval. Toward him.
He didn't like it, any of it. He wanted to stay together, warm, in her bed all winter, content with exploring each other's bodies and minds and hearts.
"What? You saw the same house? Are you sure?" She went up on her elbow and looked at him in the darkened room. "That's weird. It was like it was abandoned or for sale or something."
Ian was about to say he'd thought the same thing when his cell phone rang on Bree's bedside table. He reluctantly pulled himself away from Bree and grappled for the phone to check caller ID.
Damn. It was Darius Damiano, his eccentric millionaire client who wanted to buy Bree's house for indecipherable reasons. "I really should answer this, babe. It's a client. Do you mind?"
"No, go ahead. I have to go to the bathroom anyway."
Ian said, "Ian Carrington," into the phone, distracted as he watched Bree walk across the room naked before pulling on panties and a T-shirt retrieved from her dresser. It was dark, but not pitch-black, and he could see the outline of every one of her delicious curves as she moved.
"Carrington, it's Darius Damiano. I figured out how to get that house I want."
"What?" That snapped Ian back to reality. "What do you mean?"
"The Victorian monstrosity in Ohio's Most Haunted Town. I know you said the owner isn't going to sell, but I did a little digging, and she's going to want to unload it after she hears what I found."
Ian gripped his phone tighter, glancing toward the doorway through which Bree had disappeared. This didn't sound good. "What did you find?"
"She owes eighty grand in back property taxes. Turns out her granny had a little arrangement with the appraiser and her house value was frozen at 1989 prices. I suggested this was illegal and might land him in some trouble if he didn't reevaluate the property and go after back taxes, and he agreed with me."
"Holy shit." It was all Ian could think to say. He was sitting in Bree's bed in the very house Damiano was talking about. Bree was going to be furious, and somehow Ian doubted she had a spare eighty grand lying around. He felt a measure of responsibility in that he should have known Darius was a wealthy businessman—he went after what he wanted, and usually got it. Ian should have seen some kind of maneuver coming, but he had been too busy undressing Bree to pay attention to the signs.
"And I'm reasonable, you know that. I don't want to screw her. I'm perfectly willing to still give her my last offer. It's significantly higher than market value, and she'll be able to pay the tax bill and still have the same cash that she would have if she sold the house in an open market."
It was reasonable, and wouldn't leave Bree out any actual money. But Ian couldn't support the way Darius had gone about securing himself a purchase, nor could he ever put a price on Bree's attachment to her grandmother's house. It wasn't about money, it was about emotion. And Bree's ran high. God, she was going to be devastated, and that devastated him.
"I'll inform the owner of her options," Ian said carefully. He heard the toilet flush down the hall, and he wanted off the phone when Bree returned to the bedroom. "And I'll get back to you as soon as possible."
"Thanks. I think we can have this locked up by Christmas. I'd like closing on January 1, and have her out of the house by February 1."
"Okay, I'll present that request to her." Ian really wanted to ask Darius why the hell he was so determined to have a house in the middle of nowhere four hundred miles from his penthouse in Chicago, but Bree had walked back in and was settling down onto the bed beside him. There was no way he wanted to ask that question in front of her. It was going to be hard enough to tell her what was going on. "I'll call you as soon as I have an answer, Darius."
"Great. Thanks, Ian."
Ian turned off his phone and set it back on the nightstand. He stared at the table and tried to formulate words for what he had to tell Bree. He had none. The situation sucked, plain and simple.
Bree touched his back. "What's the matter? Who was that?"
"That was Darius, the client who wants to buy your house."
Bree felt a tremor of alarm disrupt the calm contentment she had been feeling. Ian was acting strange. He wasn't looking at her, but was staring intently at her nightstand, his back arched. "What is this Darius like? And what did he want now?"
Ian finally glanced at her over his shoulder. He was biting his fingernail. "What's he like? Well, he's . . . brisk. Efficient. He's twenty-eight and worth close to $50 million, so he has a certain confidence."
Bree still wasn't sure why Ian looked and sounded so stiff, so she leaned against his bare back and kissed his shoulder blade. "How does someone get fifty million dollars by the age of twenty-eight? That's unreal. Did he inherit it?"
"No. He investigates hauntings for a television show, and he's made some wise investments."
