Naughty Temptations

Chapter One

Chapter One

The ink was barely dry on the mortgage papers to the sprawling, old plantation house when Valerie Heart put a sledgehammer through her living room wall and discovered the Valentine addressed to her from the past. One hundred and fifty years in the past, to be precise.

She peered into the hole behind the plaster and plucked out the yellowed piece of folded paper that lay inside. It rested on top of a hinged leather case about the size of a deck of cards. The document ripped a little in her hand. Worried that the brittle stuff might turn into powder between her fingers before she could see what it contained, she unfolded the creased parchment with care. She removed her safety goggles for an unobstructed view of the sweeping, cursive lettering penned in faded ink.

I cannot sleep. I have no stomach for victuals or drink. I cannot think upon anything save having you in my bed again. Underneath me where you belong. Warm and wet as a soft spring night, with your legs wrapped around my hips as though to pull me all the way lost inside you. Were you merely a ghost, after all? A wanton phantom come to delight my nights with your sweet body, only to vanish cruelly when the c**k crows the dawn’s arrival? You torment my empty days with your absence.

To add to my misery of finding you lost to me comes the intelligence that Sherman has cut off Augusta from Charleston and the railway between. One of the last remaining Reb armies now in Charleston is in danger of being surrounded. The end of the war cannot be far off now, but my land is in the direct path of the ensuing disaster with Union shells advancing every day to kiss my property line. I am long past my original plan of doing my duty to help end this bloody conflict and then quitting the area timely before I am happened upon by either side; the result of which in either case would surely mean my court martial in one instance or my immediate hanging in the other. Yet I linger on here and find I cannot make myself leave this place without you. My gut twists at the thought of never seeing you again.

I will delay my departure in the hope that Providence may help my letter to find you in the manner you told me it shall. I pray you will re-appear as mysteriously as you left. Come back to me, Valerie Amy Heart. Find a way back to me. – Grayson Hunter

Valerie Amy Heart? Valerie stared at the paper in her hand, uncertain whether to be more incredulous at the crumbling missive that implored her by name or at the impossible date on it. February 14, 1865.

“Is this a joke?”

As soon as she heard her own words in the empty room she instantly knew this was no prank. This would be an elaborate gag to pull off, and she didn’t even know anyone in this area yet. For another thing, she could feel the truth and passion in the letter as though they were tangible things, reaching out from the page to curl around her like heat from a bonfire. Impossible as it was, her gut tingled with certainty that the paper in her hand was meant for her to find and… do what?

The historical detail in the letter was correct, as every school child in South Carolina knew. Three days after the date on this letter, General William Tecumseh Sherman and his Union Army had swept through this area and burned the state capitol, Columbia, just a few miles away. Nothing in the Union army’s path, including this plantation, had remained unscathed. The local population even put on Civil War reenactments in the countryside every year to commemorate the siege.

Valerie’s eyes scanned the document again, more slowly this time. She couldn’t decide which burning question frustrated her more.

Who was Grayson Hunter? How, or when, had I told him to send this letter? How could he have known me in 1865, much less so… intimately? What had his fate been?

Then she shivered, recalling the small cemetery belonging to the former, longtime occupants that the realtor had told her was on the property somewhere down by the woods. A morbid thought snaked through her mind before she could stop it.

Would she find Grayson Hunter’s name carved on one of the crumbling tombstones in the family plot when she explored the woods tomorrow morning?

She shuddered with more dread than she thought possible to feel for a stranger’s death, much less one who had most certainly died, whether from war or old age, at some point during the past one hundred and fifty years.

The plantation’s original owner’s name was Hunter, according to the realtor. An old Southern family, the Hunters had held this land since sometime prior to the Civil War until their line ran out when the last Hunter died recently with no heirs. Valerie still couldn’t quite believe she had won the land, house, and its contents in an estate sale auction after driving past it while on an impulsive holiday. She had fallen instantly in love with Hunter’s Chance, as the area residents still referred to the plantation.

She had left South Carolina as a child. After twenty-five years of wandering from place to place since her parents’ death, she had felt the strange urge to visit the land of her birth this year and finally found what she’d always wanted the moment she’d seen the plantation house from her rental car. Hunter’s Chance was home. It felt right. Just as did Grayson Hunter’s impassioned words in her hand.

Even a fixer-upper plantation in a bad economy was fairly pricey. The down payment on the property had emptied her savings account and put a hefty dent in the large sum of money her parents had left her. She sighed. She’d have to recoup by renovating the place into an historical bed and breakfast or the bank would grab it back from her as fast as she’d plunked her money down to get it, which was why she’d been wielding the sledgehammer. One thing was certain. First thing tomorrow she would grill the realtor for more information about the Hunter family, and one Hunter in particular.

A plaintive meow sounded from a place next to her feet on the floor and snatched her from her thoughts. She looked down into the marble green eyes of her large, ginger cat.

She had been staring at the faded ink for twenty minutes. She shook herself out of her reverie and carefully laid the letter on a nearby box, watching the piece of paper from the corner of her eye as though it could come to life any second and levitate. It just lay there innocently as the last rays from the winter sun beamed weakly through the front window.

The cat glared and meowed again to remind her in no uncertain terms that at least one of them must eat that day.

“Okay, okay. Sheesh, keep your fur on Critty,” she muttered before rummaging through a box to produce a can of Rich Kitty. “You’ve got to stop main-lining this stuff. It’s like McDonald’s for cats, you know. We’ve really got to do something about your junk food addiction. Next thing I know, you’ll be chain-smoking.”

Once Critty’s all-important dinner was attended to, continuing to work on renovations to her new home had lost its appeal. Restless, she unpacked her belongings, scattering a few personal touches on the nineteenth century furnishings that had come with the home. She munched on a sandwich without tasting it, all the while glancing uneasily from time to time at Grayson Hunter’s letter.

Later that night, after her shower, she slipped on her granny nightgown and woolen robe, glad of its warmth against the February chill. She plaited her wet hair, her gaze drawn time and again to the letter that she had moved to rest on her nightstand in the bedroom. For some inexplicable reason, she found herself uneasy if it was out of her presence for long.

She looked around the upper floor bedroom decorated with antebellum furnishings. The four-poster bed made of mahogany, matching night tables, chairs, and tall wardrobe showed some wear but were still handsome antiques. The polished, walnut wood bureau inlayed with maple and ebony that was crowned with a marble top and beveled mirror in a gilt frame all boasted expert craftsmanship of a bygone era. The porcelain washing basin and matching water pitcher on a stand in the corner were hand-painted with yellow rosebuds. She doubted the place had changed much since 1865, apart from electrical wiring and indoor plumbing.

Had this been Grayson Hunter’s room? Had he lain in her bed? Dressed in front of the gilt mirror in which she now saw her reflection? Googling his name on her laptop earlier that evening hadn’t yielded any results at all, but she had brushed up on her Civil War trivia and learn a bit more about the history of her new home. Hunter’s Chance had been passed to a distant relation after the war. Grayson Hunter, whoever he had been, had seemingly vanished in the annals of history as though he’d never existed. If only she knew more about him.

Winding the long braid around her head in a coronet, she suddenly remembered the hinged case that had accompanied the bemusing letter. Hurrying down the big, curved staircase that led to the front hall, she ran to the living room and crouched down to peer into the hole in the wall once more. She withdrew the hinged case that Grayson Hunter’s letter had rested upon. Blowing off a layer of dust, she opened it, half-fearful of what it might contain considering the startling contents of its paper companion.

The breath drained from her body as she took in the sharp detail of the Daguerreotype image that lay inside. A hard, masculine face with light, silvery eyes that seemed to look right into her soul stared up at her with a serious expression from the hinged photograph frame.

With slow wonderment, her eyes traced his high cheekbones, strong jawline, and stubborn-looking chin. She wished to tousle the thick waves of dark hair that sprang back from his forehead.

A hard knot of passion sparked in her belly. Her n*****s hardened under her nightgown and grew achy with need for this man’s touch. Dampness gathered at the apex of her legs and her inner walls pulled tight with desire.

What the hell was happening to her? She had never experienced such an immediate, overwhelming stab of physical attraction to anyone in her life. She strongly suspected that, if this man were here in the flesh with her now, she would not be able to resist offering herself in any way that pleased him.

This had to be Grayson Hunter, in his early thirties when this image had been taken. And clearly on the wrong side of the Civil War according to the Confederate gray uniform he wore.

Had he actually been a Southern sympathizer? In spite of the hint of ruthlessness around his firm mouth, his face looked too full of integrity to have advocated the ownership of slaves much less killed his countrymen to prevent their emancipation. Yet there were the remnants of slaves’ quarters on the Hunter plantation, that couldn’t be denied.

Valerie found herself back in her bedroom, his picture still in her hand. She set it on the old nightstand, open and upright, next to his letter so she could see his face from her pillow.

Something in one of her open moving boxes on the floor next to the bed caught her eye. Valerie lifted the circular wooden hoop from the box. Its center hole was decorated with sinewy threads in an intricate web design. Long tassels threaded with feathers dangled from the bottom of the hoop. A Native American woman at a craft fair in Santa Fe had recently given the dream catcher to Valerie on her cross-country travels, explaining that it wasn’t for decoration. Dream catchers were made to hang in windows and catch bad dreams in the webbing. Once trapped, they would die in the morning light. Good dreams, however, could slip through the small, center hole left in the knotting and reach the sleeper. The elderly woman had gone on to say that this was a rare kind of dream catcher that could actually make dreams come true if two hearts shared the same wish.

Come back to me, Valerie Amy Heart. Find a way back to me.

She could almost hear a deep, masculine Southern drawl commanding her from the page of his letter on the nightstand. She looked over at his picture next to the bed and stared again at the dream catcher in her hand. It was oddly warm to the touch. She fancied she could hear a slight humming sound emanating from it. In the short time she’d owned it, the dream catcher had never behaved this way. A thought materialized in her mind.

What if…?

She carried it to the window and held it up so the moon shone on the dream catcher. A sudden gust of wind rattled the pane of glass.

As though in a trance, she slipped the leather top loop of the dream catcher over a small peg she spied above the window. Backing away to admire the effect, she was suddenly very sleepy. Sleepier, in fact, than she’d ever been before.

Crawling into bed with a yawn, Valerie pulled up the thick, colorful patchwork quilt and turned out the old cranberry glass lamp beside her. It had once been a kerosene lamp that someone in the twentieth century had wired into an electric one. Critty promptly hopped up on the bed and curled up by her feet.

Soon her gentle, rhythmic breathing joined his purr and the gentle hum from the window as the only sounds in the room.

As she slept, moonlight from the window shone through the dream catcher to cast silvery, web-like shadows on the Daguerreotype of Grayson Hunter’s face.