n Saturday night, Elizabeth left her apartment just before dark. She was nervous. She had never met what Zach called a "sensitive." She didn't know if the woman was for real or a complete and utter fraud. She had no idea what might happen tonight in the house.

And Zach would be there. Since his phone call last night, he had been constantly in her thoughts. As soon as she'd heard his voice, she had wanted to see him, so badly it hurt.

Zachary Harcourt attracted her in a way no man ever had. She had never craved a man, never lusted after one, never ached for a man the way she did Zach.

It was frightening.

And impossible.

Zach was Zach, a dedicated bachelor who enjoyed the single life, a man used to sleeping with dozens of women. He hadn't bothered to deny it. She doubted he had ever been seriously involved with a woman and he probably never would be.

But Elizabeth wasn't that way. If she let down her guard, her attraction to Zach would grow. She might even fall in love with him. She knew it could happen. Every time she saw him, she felt the tremendous pull between them. Zach Harcourt wasn't a man she could chance falling in love with. If she did, he would only break her heart.

Elizabeth thought of her marriage and remembered the crushing despair she had felt at her husband's betrayal. Brian had taken the love she had offered and little by little destroyed it. She couldn't go through that again. She didn't think she would survive it.

As she drove down the road toward the little yellow house, Elizabeth steeled herself. No matter what Zach said, no matter how much she wanted him, she wasn't going to let him sway her.

Her purpose once more clear, she focused her attention on the strip of blacktop in the headlights in front of her. It was very dark tonight, the moon hidden behind a dense layer of clouds, its faint rays breaking through only now and then. A summer storm was moving in from the west. She could smell the ozone in the air, see the faint glow of lightning over the barren, far-distant hills.

Elizabeth dimmed her headlights as she neared the house, then pulled off the road onto the gravel driveway. Spotting Zach's silhouette behind the wheel of his car, she pulled up next to the black convertible and turned off the engine. Zach got out and started toward her as she climbed out of the car.

"Hi," he said softly, his dark eyes on her face. She could see the golden flecks in them and something else, something that made her chest ache.

"Hello, Zach."

He glanced away, took a slow breath, and when he turned to face her, the look was gone. "Tansy isn't here yet, but she called me on my cell and said she was on her way."

Elizabeth nodded. "I guess we can wait on the porch."

"Good idea. After what happened last week, I'm not in any rush to go in."

They sat down on the front porch steps. Zach was wearing a pair of worn Levi's and a V-neck, pullover shirt. He looked good. Too good. She wanted to reach out and touch him. She wanted to kiss him. She wanted to have him inside her.

"You keep looking at me that way and I won't be responsible for my actions."

She flushed. It was one thing to lust after a man, another altogether to get caught doing it. She fiddled with a strand of dark auburn hair, looped a thick curl behind her ear. "I wonder when she'll get here."

Zach gazed off down the highway. "Headlights coming. Maybe that's her."

Fortunately for Elizabeth, who was growing more and more nervous with Zach so near, it was. Both of them got up from the step and Zach walked over to greet her as her car pulled in and she turned off the engine.

Tansy Trevillian was nothing at all as Elizabeth had imagined. Instead of some dilapidated, flower-painted Volkswagen van, she was driving a white Pontiac Grand Prix, and she wasn't wearing a long, flowing paisley dress. In her simple beige slacks and pink-and-beige print blouse, her brown hair cut short and smartly styled, she looked more like a businesswoman than the lost-in-time hippy Elizabeth had more than half expected.

Zach stepped back as she got out of her car, then walked the petite woman over for introductions. "Liz, meet Tansy Trevillian."

The woman, probably no more than a few years older than Elizabeth, gave her a smile. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Liz."

Elizabeth didn't correct the shortened name. She was beginning to get used to it. In high school, lots of her friends had called her Liz. "Same here."

Tansy stuck out a small hand and Elizabeth shook it, the handshake firm, the woman's smile warm.

"Thanks for coming," Elizabeth said.

Tansy turned toward the house and her smile slowly faded. "Zach hasn't told me much. Just that the people who live here have been having some problems. We find it works better that way, knowing as little as possible. People like us are susceptible to suggestion just like anyone else."

"'People like us?'" Elizabeth repeated.

"Sensitives. Psychics. Clairvoyants. People with those kinds of gifts."

Or curses, Elizabeth thought.

Tansy's gaze slowly scanned the fifteen-acre compound that formed the main living area of the ranch. As the clouds parted and a portion of the moon broke through, she studied the distant set of overseers' houses, the workers' cottages and the big, two-story ranch house on the opposite side of the compound some distance away. Though the night was warm, Tansy wrapped her arms around herself to control a shiver.

"What is it?" Zach asked.

Tansy's gaze scanned the row of houses in the distance. "There's something here. I can feel it." She turned, fixed her attention on the yellow stucco house. "Something dark and evil."

Elizabeth's heart slammed into gear. "You can feel something clear out here in the open?"

Tansy's eyes returned to the other houses perched on the wide, flat, barren piece of ground. "It's everywhere around here. I've never felt anything quite like it."

A shudder climbed Elizabeth's spine. She didn't feel anything and yet the pale hue of Tansy Trevillian's face said she was telling the truth. No one said a word, just stood in the darkness waiting. Tansy shivered again, then faintly shook herself, as if she fought to return from the place she had been.

"Let's go inside." She started walking toward the door. Zach flicked a glance at Elizabeth and fell in step beside her. They followed the woman up the steps and Elizabeth used the key Maria had given her to open the front door. Zach entered first, took a quick look around, then held the door open for the women. Tansy took a single step into the living room and froze.

Her face looked even paler than it had before, and Elizabeth noticed that she trembled.

"You can feel it in here?" Zach asked softly.

Tansy nodded. "It's stronger in here. I can hardly catch my breath."

"Why don't you sit down?" Elizabeth suggested. "I'll get you a drink of water."

Tansy didn't respond. Instead, she started walking, her eyes fixed straight ahead. The living room curtains were open, the room dimly lit by the few, thin, shadowy streamers of moonlight creeping into the room. As if in a trance, Tansy headed straight for the master bedroom, her gaze fixed ahead, her hands shaking. She stopped at the foot of the bed.

"Something terrible happened in this house." She stood there, statue-still, as if she had crossed some line into another world. For several minutes, no one moved. Elizabeth's heart thumped, hard and fast, and her stomach was tied in knots. Though she felt none of the things she had experienced in the house before, Tansy must have sensed them. Crossing herself, she began to whisper some kind of prayer.

As the last words drifted away, she looked up, her eyes still unfocused, eerily glazed and oddly distant.

"Do you know what happened here?" Zach asked softly.

Still staring, Tansy swallowed. "Death. A brutal, horrible death." She looked at Zach, her eyes big and round in her small, feminine face. "And the evil that caused it still exists here."

Elizabeth's palms began to sweat. Her heart, already clattering loudly, jerked into a higher gear. She wasn't feeling any of the things she'd felt before, yet it wasn't hard to believe that Tansy Trevillian might be sensing something fearful in the house.

"What else can you tell us?" Zach pressed.

Tansy shook her head, glossy short brown hair falling over her ears. "It's all jumbled together. I can't get a fix on anything specific. I just know something terrible happened. And evil was the cause." She turned toward the door and started walking. "I can't stay here any longer. I'm sorry."

Walking out of the bedroom, she crossed the living room and went out the front door. Elizabeth, with Zach close beside her, followed the woman out into the yard.

"I'm sorry I couldn't be more help," Tansy said as she reached her car. "Too much has happened. There are too many layers, one overlapping the other." She pulled open the door. "They're in danger…the people who live in the house."

Elizabeth swallowed. She could almost hear the small, high-pitched voice she had heard in the bedroom. "What…what should we do?"

Tansy looked back at the house. "Find out what happened here. Perhaps then you will know what to do about the house."

Zach held the car door while Tansy slid behind the wheel.

"Thank you for coming," he said. "You've got my card. Send your bill to my office."

Tansy shook her head again. "Not this time. This one's on me." Snapping her seat belt in place, she started the engine. Pulling the car out onto the highway, she accelerated off down the road, driving a little faster than she should have.

Elizabeth moved toward Zach, wondering at his thoughts, as another set of headlights turned into the driveway. It was an old blue Ford pickup, and recognizing the face of the driver, she muttered a dirty word.

"Looks like the kids are home from the dance a little early," Zach said dryly.

"Looks like. And if that scowl on Miguel's face is a clue, he isn't happy to see us."

As Tansy's taillights disappeared down the highway, Miguel jumped down from the driver's seat of his pickup and marched toward them. Maria struggled to get down from the passenger side of the truck and hurried as best she could in the direction of the group in front of the house.

"I tried to keep him away," she said, looking as if she had been crying. "He was afraid I was getting too tired. I am sorry."

"It's all right, Maria," Elizabeth said. "It's time Miguel knew the truth."

"Truth," he growled. "What truth? That you believe there is a ghost in my house?"

Elizabeth's gaze swung to Maria. "You told him?"

"I thought he might listen. I should have known he would not."

"You believe there is a ghost because my pregnant wife says so? She is a child. And she is frightened to be having a baby. That is all there is to it, and I forbid you to encourage any more of her crazy notions."

Maria started crying, and Miguel turned his wrath in her direction. "Get in the house! You will not speak of this again—do you hear me?"

Maria took a shaky breath and wiped at the tears on her cheeks. "I am sorry," she whispered to Elizabeth.

"Go!"

Maria hurried away, not looking back, and Miguel fixed Elizabeth with a glare. "You are no longer welcome in this house."

"Take it easy, Miguel," Zach said, stepping a little in front of her. "Something's going on here—whether you believe it or not—and your wife is frightened. We're only trying to help."

"You want to help? Then leave us alone!" He stalked up the front porch steps, walked inside and slammed the door.

Elizabeth felt Zach's arm go around her. As much as she knew she shouldn't, she found herself leaning against him.

"He isn't a bad husband," she said. "He's just old-fashioned."

"Someone needs to take him down a peg or two."

She noticed the set of Zach's jaw and realized he wouldn't hesitate to confront Miguel Santiago—or anyone else who posed a threat to people he cared about. It was an oddly comforting thought.

"This has really been hard on Maria," she said. "Now Miguel is angry, just as she was afraid he would be. We've got to find a way to help her."

"We'll figure something out."

She glanced back at the house, thinking of Tansy Trevillian. "It sounded pretty far-fetched…all that talk about evil, but still…"

"Yeah, I know what you mean." Zach led her over to her car and waited while she slid behind the wheel. "We need to talk about this."

She nodded. "I know. I'd invite you over to my place, but I don't think…"

"I already know what you think. How about we go to Biff's and I'll buy you a cup of coffee? Worst brew in the county, but at least they're open. Not many choices in this town."

Biff's was a restaurant/bar on Main Street. The limited menu, basically frozen fried chicken and pizza, was lousy, the employees surly. She couldn't figure out how the place stayed open but it had been there for years.

"All right, Biff's is good."

"I'll follow you down there."

She nodded and started her car.

There wasn't much going on in town as they drove along Main Street, but there rarely was, even on Saturday night. The high school kids mostly took their dates to Mason, where there was a six-theater cinema and, being a farming community, the rest of the town's residents went to bed early, even on Saturday night. Except, of course, for the beer-drinking crowd, which hung around the Top Hat Bar, on a side street a few blocks away.

Elizabeth parallel parked in a space just down from Biff's front door, and Zach parked his BMW in the space behind her. She hadn't been in the restaurant—to use the term loosely—since she had returned to San Pico, but she found it hadn't changed. Worn linoleum, a pool table in the back of the narrow room, a long bar where patrons could eat or drink and a row of wooden tables along the wall.

Zach led her over to a table, then went up to the bar and ordered a couple of cups of coffee.

"Sorry, this is the leaded version," he said as he set the white china mug down in front of her. "They don't believe in decaf at Biff's."

"That's all right. After what happened tonight, I could use a bracer."

Zach smile. "Maybe I should have ordered you a whiskey."

Elizabeth ignored what that grin did to her. "Maybe you should have." But if she had a shot of alcohol and lost even a few of her inhibitions, she would invite Zach back to her apartment, back into her bed, and she didn't want to do that.

"So…what do we do next?" she asked. Picking up the little metal pitcher on the table, she poured a good dose of cream into her thick black coffee.

"Tansy says we need to find out what happened in the house, which we've already started to do—unfortunately, without much success. I guess we'll just have to try harder."

"What else can we do?"

"I'll talk to a few of the workers on the farm, see if anyone has been around long enough to remember any of the people who lived in the old house before it was torn down." He took a sip of his coffee, then grimaced at the bitter taste. "The place was there a lot of years, though. As far back as I can remember. I imagine quite a few tenants have lived there at one time or another."

"After you mentioned it, I remembered seeing it there when I was a kid. I just never paid that much attention."

"It wasn't much to look at, an old, gray, wood-framed house with a big front porch."

"It didn't make much of an impression. I remember it had white wooden shutters at the windows, and by the time I was in high school, it was pretty run-down."

He nodded. "The problem is finding out who lived there."

"More importantly, we need to know if anyone died in the house, particularly a child."

"According to the stuff on the Net, violence is usually part of the equation, or a sudden, unexpected death, like an accident or something. Of course, there's no way to know if it's true."

"No, but it's something to keep in mind."

Zach took a sip of his coffee then set the cup back down on the table. "I'll find out as much as I can. I'm not exactly welcome out at the farm, but I'll try talking to Carson."

"That ought to be interesting. You going to tell your brother you're trying to find a ghost?"

"Not hardly. I'm going to tell him I'm interested in the history of the farm." He took another sip of the bitter brew. "I'll tell him I have someone interested in writing a book on the area. Carson will jump through hoops for a little publicity."

Elizabeth stirred more cream into her mug, trying to disguise the taste. "I really appreciate your help with this, Zach. This isn't exactly my area of expertise."

"Mine either."

They spent the next half hour planning their strategy. Since the house sat on ground owned by Harcourt Farms, there were no separate ownership records to search. Public utility companies seemed the most promising avenue—if their records went back far enough and the company could be convinced to share them.

Harcourt Farms provided its overseers with a house and water, Zach told her, but the phone was paid by the tenants, as were the gas and electric bills. Elizabeth planned to speak to the telephone and utility companies to see what she could find out.

She decided to use Zach's story that someone wanted to do a history of the farm. Of course, their best hope was that Carson might have some sort of record of who had lived there, or that the longtime employees on the farm might remember something useful.

It was getting late by the time their plan was set. Elizabeth had managed to finish several cups of the too-strong coffee, leaving her wide-awake. So was Zach, she discovered as he walked her to her car, then leaned down and gave her a soft, incredibly sexy kiss.

She didn't resist. It just felt too good.

"Let me come home with you." He kissed her again, a deep, thorough kiss that turned her insides to butter. "We're good together, Liz. Let's see where this thing takes us."

She leaned toward him, tempted. Oh, so, tempted. Instead, she pressed her fingertips against his lips to stop his seductive words.

"I wish I could, Zach. You'll never know how much. But I just can't take the risk."

He stared at her for several long seconds, then cupped her face between his hands and kissed her deeply. Knowing she shouldn't, she let him.

"I could persuade you, Liz. You know I could."

She looked into those hot dark eyes and knew he was right. "I know you could. I'm asking you not to."

Zach said something beneath his breath and stepped away from her, raking a hand through his short dark hair. "I wish things could be different."

"I wish I were more like Lisa."

Zach reached toward her, cupped her cheek with his hand. "I wouldn't want that. I like you just the way you are. I wouldn't change a thing." A last soft kiss and he took her arm, led her around to the driver's side door of her car, then waited as she settled inside.

"I'll keep you posted," he said when she rolled down her window. "You do the same."

"I will. Good night, Zach."

"Good night, baby."

She watched him in the mirror as she drove away, saw his headlights appear behind her as he followed to make sure she safely reached her house, and wondered if she had made the right decision.