Kiss Me Hello

by LK Rigel

  “No, babe. It doesn’t feel good.” Bram took his plate to the sink and rinsed it, put it in the dishwasher, then washed out the pan. Sara couldn’t fault his housekeeping habits. Compared to her, he was a neat freak. “You want to come?” he said. “I’m going to Pelican Chase to find a hot spot.”

  “No, I want to take a shower and explore a little.”

  He came back to the nook and kissed her forehead. “Maybe later we can find each other’s hot spots.” Not quite the same as connecting body and soul.

  Anyway, she realized painfully, she still wasn’t sure she wanted to.

  He scooped up his laptop and was out the door, waving at her through the window. He jumped into his truck, and roared out of the courtyard.

  No telling how long he’d be gone. Ever since he published Hot Heat, once he got online it was hard for him to log off. He was always checking sales and ranks and promotions and whether his Facebook fan page had any more likes. For one crazy minute, Sara fantasized not bringing internet access to the house.

  But Bram was right. Who could live like that these days?

  She took her satchel of stuff upstairs. Bram had cleared away Aunt Amelia’s things in the master bath. His razor and deodorant and toothbrush were neatly arranged on one side of the old-fashioned basin. There was room for Sara on the other side of the sink, but it felt wrong. She wasn’t ready to move into Aunt Amelia’s space.

  On her way to the bathroom down the hall, she stopped outside the guest bedroom. Sunshine streamed in through the window over the unmade bed, too cheerful a mess for a ghost. She poked her head through the door for a look at the chair in the corner. No one there. Mostly relieved, she continued down the hall.

  Bram was thorough. He packed her toothbrush and toothpaste, shampoo, conditioner, deodorant. Even her birth control pills, which she’d quit taking months ago. Why screw up her body for no reason? Uh-oh. What about last night? They’d used no protection whatsoever. She hadn’t even thought about it.

  The pills were still on the sink when she stepped out of the shower. She dried her hair, considering. Last night she was sure they’d kick-started their sex life, but this morning Bram was as withholding as he’d been all year, affair or not. A tease. She didn’t want to call him cruel, but that’s how it felt. She started to cry.

  “Don’t be stupid,” she told herself. She wasn’t going to let him get that close to her again, not until she was sure of him—and of herself. She put the pills in the cabinet without taking one.

  - 13 -

  Snowdrops In May

  THE POND WAS STILL there in the eucalyptus grove, fed by the little waterfall from the stream. This time of year so many kinds of flowers were in bloom. Irises, tulips, daffodils, narcissus, lilies, and more. And snowdrops, which should be impossible. The middle of May was far too late for snowdrops.

  The slate rock jutted over the side of the pond as if put there by design, a place to sit and watch the fish go by. Sara sat down and wrapped her arms around her knees. No fish. Maybe they’d show up when the water was warmer.

  And then it hit her: she would be here when the water was warmer. She’d be here all through summer—and beyond. Every summer from now on, if it was true Turtledove Hill would be hers. Her problem with the district had flipped on its head. Instead of being devastated by a RIF notice, she was actually relieved to get it. She wouldn’t have to write a letter of resignation.

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Sara. Wait until you see Aunt Amelia’s lawyer.”

  She rested her head on her knees and closed her eyes, listening to the stream and the birds in the trees. It was strange to think of not being a teacher. Stranger still to realize she wouldn’t mind, not if she had Turtledove Hill.

  All at once, the birds stopped their chatter. The only sound was of water flowing from the stream. Sara looked across the pond and gasped. He was standing among the snowdrops, watching her.

  She scrambled to her feet, never taking her eyes off the man on the other side of the pond. “Are you real?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Are you?”

  “My name is Sara Lyndon—Blakemore.”

  “My name is Joss Montague.” With a worried expression, he took a step forward. “Don’t disappear.”

  “That’s my line.” She stepped down from the rock and moved a few steps closer to him. He was dressed the same. Among the trees and flowers he was even more like a romantic poet—or a Mr. Rochester. “Are you…are you a ghost?”

  “I don’t know what I am. I think not, if you can see me and hear me.” He smiled and stretched his hand out to her. “And touch me.”

  Sara recoiled inside, but he looked so vulnerable and hopeful that she couldn’t be afraid. “Promise you’re not an axe murderer?” she said.

  His laughed and ran his hand through his hair. “Promise.”

  She returned his smile. He was surely something ghostly, but he struck her as all muscle and hard angles, good bones, soulful dark eyes—something human. He had quiet charisma. Inner beauty. There really was such a thing.

  “I’ll try to touch you,” she said.

  The corners of his eyes crinkled. “Touch away.” His sleeves were rolled back, exposing his forearms. “I doubt you’ll have a problem.”

  “If I hadn’t seen you disappear on the stairs,” Sara said, “I’d think this was a joke. You seem so real.”

  “I seem real. I guess that’s a comfort.”

  She gripped his arm, but her hand made a fist and went through. He slipped out of her grasp like smoke—but his forearm was still there, intact, with the rest of him. “What the hell?” She backed away.

  “Interesting.” He wrinkled his eyebrows in a puzzled frown and looked from his forearm to Sara. “You had no trouble last night.”

  “Last night.”

  “Last night,” he said quietly. “When you ravished me.”

  “I did no such thing. Last night I was with my husband.”

  “No, doll. You were with me.”

  “That’s…not possible.” A feeling of dread crept down Sara’s spine. It wasn’t possible. “You didn’t—you couldn’t possess Bram’s body.”

  “Who is Bram?”

  “My husband. The man I slept with last night.”

  “Last night, doll? You were with me.” Montague tilted his head. “But I wouldn’t exactly call it sleeping.”

  “No. No, no, no. How could you even contemplate such a thing?”

  “I contemplated nothing. Keep still.” He mimicked her. “Let me do everything. You ravished me. I must say it was very nice.”

  Ravished. He sounded so old-fashioned, almost cute. Almost. “But we’ve never even…even…”

  “Even what?”

  “We’ve never even kissed!”

  “No.” He put his fingertips under her chin. Her head tilted up and back—whether from the force of his will or the cold feeling on her skin, she couldn’t say. “We've never kissed.” His dark eyes were so real, his gaze so intense. He bent forward until their lips almost touched.

  “Oh!” Sara stepped back. She tried to remember everything she and Bram did last night. Or rather, everything she did. In truth, she didn’t remember kissing him—on the mouth, anyway. Good lord. This wasn’t happening.

  “You liked it!” Montague grinned. “You’re embarrassed—which is adorable, by the way—but you liked it.”

  “What, can you read my thoughts?” Crap. Who knew what ghosts could do?

  “You're afraid everything I just said is true.”

  “That doesn’t prove anything. Anybody could guess that if a person had sex with her husband and he turned out to be someone else she’d be afraid it was true.”

  He crossed his eyes and tilted his head.

  “That made sense in my head,” Sara said.

  “Okay,” Montague said. “Think of something I couldn’t possibly know. Think of something from your life outside Turtledove Hill.”

  What was the furthest thing from Turtledove
Hill? Her parents. Her sister Becca. She was thirteen now. Sara wouldn’t know her if she saw her on the street.

  “You’re confused,” he said.

  “Yeah, right. You can see that plain on my face.”

  “So I can’t read your mind,” he said. “But deny you enjoyed last night.”

  “You should have stopped me.”

  “Really? I suddenly emerge from the mist, flat on my back, naked. I’m being ravished by a beautiful woman. I’m supposed to say excuse me, doll, but no, thank you? I don’t think so. I hadn’t had sex in over sixty years!”

  “Eww.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Wait a minute. All those fine things you wrote about the sacrament of marriage, yet you had no problem jumping into another man’s private body and having sex with his wife!”

  “I’m a complex guy.”

  “Gah!”

  “And speaking of privacy, I’m not the one poking around in someone else’s personal journal.”

  “But you’re dead.”

  “Am I?” He threw up his hands in exasperation. “I wasn’t dead last night.” He moved closer. “I don’t feel dead now.”

  She took another step back. “You were in a body last night.”

  “You know what? It’s because of you,” he said. “For some reason, you make this all very real to me. Right here, right now.” He squatted and reached for a clump of snowdrops. The flowers moved, but his hand passed through them. He tried again with the same result. “Well, that’s not encouraging.”

  He stood up. “All I know is this is the longest conversation I’ve had with anyone in sixty years.”

  “You’ve talked to other people?”

  “Amelia. A few words at a time. Hell, the first time I saw you lasted longer than any time I see her.” He examined Sara more closely. “That must have been some time ago. You were younger then. A girl.”

  “Fourteen years ago. You were sitting at the bottom of the stairs.”

  “And you ran away. I didn't mean to scare you. It was so amazing to be seen. To be spoken to.”

  “I thought you were her lover.”

  “Ha,” Montague said. “Not likely.”

  “But you touched me then. I felt it. And on the stairs yesterday. You kept me from falling.”

  “You’re welcome, by the way. Can you feel this?”

  “A little.” A cold sensation crept over the back of her hand. “Push harder.”

  She felt more pressure then his hand slipped through hers—as if he were a ghost. “Dammit.” He ran his hand through his hair.

  “Why me, Mr. Montague?” She pressed her hand to her cheek. Her fingers were cold as ice. “Why can I see you?”

  “I think we’re beyond the Mr. Montague stage, Sara.”

  “Sara,” she repeated. Then she remembered something from last night, quite distinctly. He’d called her Sara. “Bram never calls me Sara.”

  “I don’t want to hear about Bram,” he said. “And call me Joss. Please.”

  She backed away, sad and sick. Bram didn’t remember because he wasn’t there. The connection she’d made with him last night, soul to soul, wasn’t real. It was imagined, fantasized. All on her side.

  Pathetic. Pathetic. Pathetic.

  “I can’t.” She couldn’t feel this way about someone who wasn’t her husband. Just because Bram was unfaithful didn’t mean she would be. She wouldn’t. “This is wrong. I have to go.”

  She ran.

  - 14 -

  Ghost Screamer

  “SARA!”

  Joss’s voice rang out behind Sara and faded. She didn’t look back.

  She ran all the way to the house, up the back steps, into the kitchen. She poured herself a glass of water. Her hand shook so much she spilled half of it. She focused on the sensation of cold liquid traveling down to her stomach. Anything to anchor her to reality.

  No wonder Bram didn’t remember last night! Oh, god. Oh, god. Oh, god. What was she going to do?

  She headed up to the guest room for the journal. It had to contain a clue, some idea of how to deal with this. She picked up the shawl, but the chair was empty. The journal wasn’t under the bed or in the dresser either. For a panicked minute she thought Bram might have found it, but she was pretty sure he only had his laptop with him when he left the house.

  She thought of the ghost at the Chase Me Inn, always moving its doll, and went up to look in the observatory. The journal was on the desk, moved back to its proper place like the doll in the window seat.

  “Hello again.” Joss appeared at the desk, sitting in the chair.

  “Gah, don’t do that!” she said.

  “Do what?”

  “Appear all of a sudden out of nothing.”

  “I didn’t do it on purpose. I felt you, and then I was here.”

  “Did you bring the journal up here?”

  “I’d forgotten all about Olivia until you read about her.” He tapped the journal’s cover. His hand seemed so solid, but there was no sound. “Last night after I fell asleep—”

  “You mean after Bram’s body fell asleep.”

  “—I came up to the aerie to read. My life started to come back to me.”

  “The aerie. That’s what you call this place?”

  “It’s my refuge. I used to like coming up here to watch the sea and the stars.”

  “Well, stop it. You have to go away. You’re dead.” She picked up the journal and hugged it to her chest. “And don’t bring this up here. It’s too damp and I…I want…”

  She turned away from the desk, away from Joss, and went to the window. The aerie. A good name for this refuge with a view. A part of her regretted having to get rid of this ghost. She looked over her shoulder at him.

  “What do you want, Sara?” He leaned back in the chair, his arms behind his head.

  Still hugging the journal, she pondered the question. She wanted Bram to be as romantic as this ghost, this manifestation of her dreams. She wanted him to say her name the way Joss Montague had. He bound curiosity, excitement, and desire all into the one word and made it mystical. Sara.

  What did she want right now, this moment? To preserve the journal. To read Montague’s story. His writing was wonderful, interesting…beautiful. Better than anything Bram could write if he wrote every day for the rest of his life. How sad.

  She moved to the door. “Just leave things where I put them, okay?”

  She took the journal downstairs and put it in the dresser drawer under the extra jeans Bram had brought. She was too frazzled to read now. She made the bed, and as she smoothed the quilt she pictured last night and how good she’d felt. How she loved hearing her name whispered so tenderly.

  “It was wonderful, wasn’t it?” Joss said behind her. He was sitting in the chair again with the shawl draped over his shoulders. “The earth moved.”

  “You’re insufferable!” She threw a pillow, but it just hit the wall and fell behind the chair as he disappeared.

  SARA TURNED HER CAR onto Bird Row to look for parking. She needed to find Spot and ask how to de-ghostify Turtledove Hill. Bram’s truck was parked crooked next to the hitching rail in front of The Book Beak, taking up two spaces.

  “What a jerk.” Joss materialized in the passenger seat.

  “Go away,” Sara said. “You’re hardly one to complain about taking more than your share of space.”

  “True. As you know, I am a rather large guy.”

  “Oh, ick. If that’s supposed to be sexual innuendo, don’t forget you were using another man’s…largeness.” She turned at the next corner to go around the block.

  “The ignominy of it all!” Joss put his hand to his forehead in mock shame. “Wait. Is it IG-nominy or ig-NOM-iny? That’s one of those words you only read but never actually hear anyone say.”

  “IG-nuh-minnie,” Sara said. “I’m an English teacher. Or I was one, anyway.”

  “Oh, really.” He had a gleam in his eye. “Can I be teacher’s pet?”

/>   “Why are you here?”

  “I don’t know. It feels like I’m stuck to you. Psychically or something.”

  “That’s just what I need in my life. Jakey Twilighty imprinting creepiness.”

  “Imprinting? You mean like a duckling?” His face screwed up like he didn’t know what she was talking about. But of course he wouldn’t. He’d missed decades’ worth of changes in the zeitgeist. “I think it’s worse than that. Seriously, Sara. Our…lovemaking was pretty intense. I believe I’m stuck to you spiritually.

  “Because the earth moved, you mean.”

  “Well, yeah. For me. God, is sex like that normal with you?”

  No, it wasn’t. But that was none of Joss’s business. “You have to leave me alone.”

  “I don’t have control over it. I’ll keep showing up. In your life. In your car—”

  “In my bed?”

  He smiled. “Who knows?”

  “Go away. I’m married.”

  “Maybe.” His voice softened. “But is he?”

  And there it was, the question she avoided, hanging in the air as she pulled the car into an open parking space. Her heart hurt. She wiped her eyes and pointed emphatically to her wedding band. “I’m married, Joss.”

  He smiled again, with a mischievous glint in his eye. “You called me Joss.” His voice was caring and sexy, warm and inviting, and he dissipated to nothing.

  THE BELLS JINGLED ON the door as Sara entered The Book Beak. “Halloo!” Peekie called out from behind the espresso machine. “The usual?”

  “I’m a regular then,” Sara said. “You already know what I like.”

  “You were a regular before ever I saw you, my dear.”

  “Ah, what a sweetie.” Sara felt completely at ease with Peekie. “By any chance have you seen my husband?” She rarely referred to Bram as her husband. She must have said it for Joss’s benefit—if he was listening from wherever he’d disappeared to.

  “Bonnie commandeered Bram,” Peekie said. “She’s buying his lunch across the street, trying to enlist him in the cause.”

  “The cause.”

  “She hopes to bring him on board,” Peekie said. “To help convince you to sell to Gracien.”