"Shadow Game" - читать интересную книгу автора (Feehan Christine)

for her.
She slipped off her heels and stared up at the house. She loved San Francisco,
and living in the hills overlooking the beautiful city was a treasure she never
tired of. Theirs was an Old World country estate, several stories high and
sprawled out with balconies and terraces, giving it an elegant, romantic charm.
The house had more rooms than she and her father could ever possibly use, but
she loved every inch of it. The walls were thick and the spaces wide. Her
refuge. Her sanctuary. God knew she needed one.
The wind blew softly, ruffling her hair and touching her face gently. The breeze
brought her a sense of comfort. After a nightmare, the impression of danger
usually dissipated a few minutes after waking, but this time it lingered, an
alarm that was becoming frightening. Night was beginning to fall. She stared up
at the skies, watching the gray threads spinning into darkening clouds overhead
and floating across the moon. Dusk was a soft blanket enfolding her. Wisps of
fog began to drift across the terraced lawns, white lace in ribbons curling
around the trees and bushes.
Lily turned in a circle, taking in the rolling manicured lawns, the shrubbery
and trees, the fountains and gardens artfully placed to please the eye. The
sprawling acreage to the front was always perfectly immaculate without so much
as a leaf or blade of grass put of place, but behind the house, the woods were
left wild. There always seemed to her a balance in nature, a quiet and a sense
of peace. Her home gave her a freedom she couldn't find anywhere else.
Lily had always been different. She had a giftЧa talent, her father called it.
She called it a curse. She could touch people and know their private thoughts.
Things not meant to be out in the open. Dark secrets and forbidden desires. She
had other gifts as well. Her home was her one refuge, a sanctuary with walls
thick enough to protect her from the assault of intense emotions bombarding her
night and day.
Fortunately, Peter Whitney seemed to have natural barriers so that she couldn't
read him when he had tucked her into bed at night as a child. Still, he had been
careful of physical contact, careful the barriers in his mind held firm when she
was around. And he had taken great care in finding others with natural barriers
so that her home was always a sanctuary for her. The people who had cared for
her became her family and were all people she could safely touch. It had never
occurred to her until that moment to ask how Peter Whitney had known the people
he hired were people his unusual daughter would be unable to read.
Ryland Miller had been totally unexpected. She could have sworn the earth moved
when she first set eyes on him. He had gifts and talents of his own. Lily knew
her father considered him dangerous. She sensed Ryland was dangerous but she
wasn't certain in what way. A small smile curved her mouth. He was probably
dangerous to all women. He certainly had an effect on her body. She had to
corner her father and make him listen to her for once. She needed a few answers
that only he could give her.
Anxiety settled in the pit of her stomach and Lily pressed a hand to her
midsection, wondering at the persistence of the threatening omen. She knew
better than to ignore a continual disquiet so deeply imbedded in her bones. With
a soft sigh, Lily headed determinedly for the house. The path she took was a
narrow one, made of blue-gray slate, leading around the maze, through the tea
garden toward a side entrance.
Lily stepped on the smooth slate stair and the earth rocked. She caught at the