“Come on inside. This is going to astonish you. It’s just like the modern day shrine a pathological killer would have in his or her room.” Anna Marie grinned as she waved her arm to greet us into the room.
On the wall across from the bed, an old wardrobe stood beside a floor to ceiling shrine to a man who looked a lot like the man in the pictures from the chest back home.
Along with various pictures of Charles Eli Kinsley from young adulthood to manhood, there were drawings Eliza had signed with EM on the bottom corners with various dates. There were also papers with only repeated words in calligraphic handwriting. Poems. And about two hundred scribbled hearts with Eliza and Charles Eli written in the middle.
“Freaky, right?” Anna Marie grinned as she pulled her long ponytail around. She fingered it as she looked over the candles based at the foot of the shrine.
“It alarms me how excited you get over the most morbid scenery,” Shelby said.
Kaitlyn stepped closer and eyed one of the documents. She jerked it down. “I think we just found gold, folks. A curse. Particularly the Jaded Lover’s Curse.”
“And who thought it would be a bad idea to visit here?” Shelby turned to Cole and waved the paper in his face.
“Hey, this doesn’t mean anything. If we can’t access the power used for the curse, then we’re screwed.” Cole sat on the bed. He patted a dust cloud into the air. “Hey, Allie. You wanna stay here a while? We can let the girls go back home and hitch a ride back.”
My cheeks heated, but he stared at the girls for their reaction.
“I don’t need mental pictures. It’s bad enough I have to hear you guys at home.” Kaitlyn held her stomach and staggered to the door in exaggerated queasiness.
“You won’t have to for long. Soon, you’ll be the proud new owners of this funeral parlor.” Cole waved the dust out of his face and fled the bed.
“You’re in an exceptionally good mood,” I said.
“I guess actually doing something instead of surrendering gives me hope.” Cole crossed to me and leaned his forehead on mine.
I tried not to think about what had just happened across the way, but it was hard when the ghost had been able to recreate all of Cole’s token gestures with pinpoint accuracy.
“Do we need to talk?” Cole leaned back with a narrowed observation.
“Everything is perfectly fine. Just stay close.” I turned to clip the conversation short, or he would press me until I spilled in front of everyone. It was too embarrassing.
“Hello?” a man’s voice called from downstairs. “Anyone here?”
I jumped.
Shelby peered over the banister and looked as though she had been slapped with a two-by-four.
I had to see what had knocked her almost unconscious. Everyone else leaned over the banister.
All the girls except Shelby let out gasps at the exact same time. Shelby was statue still.
A man with the jawline of the finest male model and the wavy black hair to match appeared at the bottom of the steps. He wore a suit and clutched papers along with what looked like a large key ring.
Storm force wind carried leaves across the floor from the front entrance.
His voice was low, soothing. “I’m so sorry, Miss Moss. I can assure you we normally keep the doors locked.”
Kaitlyn and Shelby exchanged confused glances, but it took both of them a few seconds to answer.
I’d never seen Shelby speechless.
Shelby finally found words. “It was, but the lady down there let us in.”
The guy looked around him and shrugged. “There’s no one down here but me, and as far as I know, there is only one set of keys. Are you sure there was a woman?”
“Yep, she took us on a tour.” Shelby’s expression perked back up as she flipped her long blond hair over her shoulder.
The guy looked behind him, then toward the living room and back of the house.
We walked down the stairs to meet him.
“You’d think y’all just caught sight of a celebrity,” Cole grumbled.
I squeezed his hand. “You’re the most gorgeous man I’ve ever met. Don’t feel threatened.”
Kaitlyn met him first and shook his hand. “An elderly lady in a black nun-type dress let us in. I’m Kaitlyn Moss. This is my sister, obviously.”
“Shelby Moss. Glad to make your acquaintance.” Shelby shook the man’s hand.
He held her hand longer than he held Kaitlyn’s and gave her a smile that would have given the sun a run for its money. “Likewise. I’m Trevor Edwards, your family’s attorney. I never come this far into the house. Now you know why. The lady you referred to was the housekeeper. She’s no longer with us.”
“Oh, did she move?” Shelby’s face livened with interest as he released her hand.
“No, she died.” Trevor’s eyebrows perked. He aimed a sexy grin at her. “There are many houses with a ghost story attached to them, but this one is the real deal. Are you sure you want to bother with these documents, Miss Moss?”
Shelby and Kaitlyn looked to a stack of papers in his outstretched hand.
Anna Marie took them. “Call her Shelby, and of course they do. I think they’re just a little shocked is all.”
Trevor kept his eyes trained on Shelby. “Since you’ve already seen the inside, would you like to see the grounds?”
I almost laughed at the way Shelby swayed.
Her jaw was slack. You’d have thought she’d just met her favorite rock star. She stared into his eyes for an almost uncomfortable length of time. “Um, uh, sure. Yeah. That’d be great.”
“Is it okay if we look over the papers and think about it before we commit?” Kaitlyn said.
“Of course. I thought you’d feel that way after the visit. My great grandfather passed the documents down to my grandfather and so on. We’ve been holding the property until someone was brave enough to tackle ownership. After your experience today, if don’t want the house, I’ll understand. It will remain unoccupied until someone comes along and dozes it down or completely remodels it with the idea of resale. Either way, it’s no trouble.” He offered Shelby a very largely muscled arm. “You ready for the tour?”
“Yeah, I think I’ve seen enough. You two go ahead,” Kaitlyn said.
Shelby took Trevor’s arm and exhaled excitedly as she squeezed it.
“I think I’m going to vomit,” Cole thought-spoke to me and probably anyone else who could hear. “He’d better not be a player. I’ve taken a brotherly fondness to her. I don’t want to have to tear someone apart, limb by limb.”
After they were out the door, Kaitlyn turned to us with a broad smile. “Don’t worry. Shelby’s used to attention. She’s dated guys just as attractive and dumped them without batting an eyelash when they cheated or acted in the slightest way disrespectful. I think we just witnessed another case of love at first sight. I’ve never seen her respond to a guy like that.”
Anna Marie clasped her hand and stared off with a dreamy gaze. “I literally heard wedding bells when he stepped into view. I have an uncanny way of detecting permanent bonds as soon as they are created. And as soon as Shelby and Trevor made eye contact, a bond was born. Now, one down, one to go. Now we’ve got to get you married off.”
Kaitlyn stiffened at the phrase as if Anna Marie had just suggested she join a traveling circus of freaks.
“You’re jumping the gun a little. They haven’t had a first date,” Kaitlyn said, but she grinned. “He was definitely interested, though.”
Anna Marie sighed and ushered us along. “If I have to visit every weekend, and bring a different cousin every time I show up, I’m going to get you hitched.”
“Hitched. You make me sound like a farm animal.” Kaitlyn linked arms with her. “Come on before another ghost appears in here. We’re going to have to get this place blessed or something.”
And try as I might, I couldn’t keep my almost indiscretion with the gh
ost who’d appeared so much like Cole out of my head long enough to get alone with Cole before we discussed it. I’d been molested by a ghost. Now I knew exactly how Cole felt. I felt like an ass for holding him accountable for all the times he’d been sexually assaulted by my sister. How did I tell him what had happened without sounding psychotic or paranoid or both?
“You and I do need to talk.” Cole’s gaze bore into mine.
“You wanna go outside?” My stomach lurched.
Please don’t be mad. Please don’t be mad.
We’d gotten along so good after we’d worked through all our Grace issues. This was the last thing we needed.
Surely he’d find a way to understand, given what had happened with him and a demon-possessed woman at a motel. And the same woman on a pond bank back when drugging someone was literally unheard of. Poisoning them, sure. Plenty of past royalty had been poisoned to death, but Grace might just have been the creator of the date rape drugging scenario.
Anna Marie and Kaitlyn looked bewildered at Cole’s change in disposition.
“You said you found what you needed? If so, I’m going out to talk to Cole in private for a few minutes.”
“I thought you’d want to see search through some more of the house?” Kaitlyn said.
“We’ll have plenty of time to comb through that room when you two sign the papers. Right now, I need to talk to my wife in private.” Cole’s gaze still didn’t leave me.
“Hey, it’s a little soon for domestic violence.” Kaitlyn stepped closer.
Cole narrowed his eyes. “Funny. We’ll be outside.”
“We’ll be in here looking for a brush and some more items we can use for the spell. It tells everything we need to recreate it.” Kaitlyn wagged her fingers bye.
“After that, we’ll go see if Shelby needs rescuing.” Anna Marie looked in the direction Shelby and Trevor had gone.
Cole pulled me by the hand, but it wasn’t as warm as usual, and it definitely felt stiffer in my grasp. Normally, his touch was soothing.
At the side of the car, Cole didn’t give me a chance to explain before he started in on me. “Why didn’t you tell me something attacked you?”
Well that was not what I expected he’d say. Which made me feel that much worse. Now all the fuss I had made over his ghost stalker was beyond juvenile. “I was going to, but it just seemed like inappropriate timing. I wanted to wait till we were alone.”
“You should have gotten to safety faster. You don’t understand how easy it would be for something to hurt you. I’d lose my mind if that ever happened.” Cole took both my hands, and his green stare burned me. “I can’t lose you.”
Apparently, I hadn’t thought enough about what had happened upstairs for Cole to understand I hadn’t exactly been attacked. Nor had he heard that I sort of enjoyed it, until the person disappeared. And I wouldn’t have enjoyed it if the ghost, or whatever it was, hadn’t been amazingly talented at making itself to look and sound exactly like my husband.
Come to think of it, though, the ghost had said ambiguous things, and I’d read into them.
Everything he’d said could have been said to anyone. It hadn’t known anything personal about me.
That was a good thing. At least I didn’t have to worry that it might have been Grace pulling her tricks again.
I shuddered.
A fuse had sparked to life in Cole’s gaze. It was just a matter of time before the bomb went off.
Crap. That thought hearing stuff was really trying my nerves.
He dropped my hands. “You didn’t almost have intimate relations with a ghost?”
“Please don’t be a hypocrite. The same thing happened to you. He felt real. He looked and sounded exactly like you, and I didn’t have blurred vision when it took place. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Except like it while it was occurring.”
“I thought it was you. There was nothing about the ghost that gave me the first inkling that I wasn’t in an embrace with my husband.” Starting to get a little annoyed, I stepped back from him.
Cole sighed deeply and stared at a tree nearby. “I’m not mad at you. I’m pissed that something almost raped my wife.”
Okay, I would have been furious too, so I had to defuse the situation. I stepped closer and pulled his arms around me. “You’re so cute when you’re jealous.”
Cole fumed as he regarded me. “It not…that’s not why…just hush.”
I gave him a cute expression I knew he loved from his past responses and wiggled as close as I could get into his embrace. “You are adorable when you show your insecurities. And I’m sure I would have stopped before anything happened.”
“Did you?” Cole winced as he waited.
“Do you want me to recount it step by step?” I kissed his neck, then moved to his jawline.
He stiffened but his thumbs made a slow ascent up my ribs. “I mean… Did you kiss?”
“Not exactly.” This was fun.
His lips pursed and that little vein on his forehead that popped out when he was pissed bulged. “What does ‘not exactly’ mean?”
I diverted my gaze. “He kissed my neck.”
Cole took a breath and held it.
I still didn’t look at him. “And I kissed his nose.”
He exhaled, his eyes narrowed to slits, and his nostrils flared. He let me go and leaned back on the car.
“Don’t worry. That’s when I shoved him away and told him it was inappropriate timing.” I caught Cole’s jaw in my hand and forced him to look into my eyes. Cole’s hurt expression softened every molecule of anger I’d had for him since I’d learned of the motel incident.
“You’re never going in that house again.” The bad mood I’d expected he’d have most of the day given our current race to an invisible finish line with Grace finally reared its ugly head. He paced the broken sidewalk and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Why do you attract ghosts? What is it about you that they just can’t stay away from?”
“I’m irresistible, or they’re jealous of me.” I leaned against the car. The wind picked up and light rain sizzled on the pavement. “Let’s get in the car and talk about all the times you’ve been molested by a hundred-year-old ghost that you have actually had sex with and see who wins this little argument.”
Cole jerked the SUV door open and waved for me to get in. “For the record, she tricked me by drugging my food. I never willingly had sex with her.”
“In my defense, the ghost looked exactly, to the T, like you. He was pretty hot.” I jerked Cole into the seat beside me and sat on his lap.
“This is not funny.” He pulled the door shut on us.
“It is, actually. How does it feel to have the tables turned?” I traced his jawline. The way it worked when he was furious, pulsating, took my breath. “Do you know how sexy you are?”
“Don’t change the subject.” Cole closed his eyes.
I pulled his face to me and took his bottom lip between mine.
His hands shot around me and his fingers found the skin under my shirttail. His thumbs dug into the sensitive hollows of my hips. He turned me to straddle him.
Wound in a mess of heavy breathing and wet kisses, I almost forgot where we were. He had a way of doing that to me every time we touched.
Laughter and loud talking interrupted us, which was probably a good thing because I was about three seconds from ripping Cole’s clothes off.
“And the Bobbsey Twins interrupt again.” Cole gazed out the window where the girls walked from the rear of the property. “I’m going to tear into you when we get home.”
His words singed me almost as much as his touch. “I can’t wait.”
“Thank God for tinted windows.” The corner of Cole’s mouth drew into the sexiest grin I’d ever seen in my life.
“Look at it this way.” Reluctantly, I slid off his lap and into my seat. “Upstairs, the ghost was nowhere near as good as you. He coul
dn’t even convince me to kiss him.”
Cole covered his face and lay against the window. “How do you do that to me? I can be so mad, and then bam, you almost have me arrested for public indecency.”
I giggled as Shelby, Kaitlyn, and Anna Marie opened the doors. Trevor sent Shelby and the girls a wave as he walked to his black BMW.
“Please tell me you gave him your number?” I said, hoping they hadn’t gotten a glimpse of us in our indecent embrace. We would never hear the end of it.
“Maybe.” Shelby found the car keys with a wide grin. She flipped her hair over her shoulder and regarded me in the rearview.
“I get it. He’s hot. Can we move to the matter at hand?” Cole rolled his eyes. “Did you get your hog warts or whatever you needed for your witch’s brew?”
“Yep.” Kaitlyn dangled two zip lock baggies with a brush in one and indistinguishable particles in the other. “We might be able to use human dander. In all the dust on the floor and from the wash bin, we should have plenty.”
Anna Marie held up an old washbowl with a nasty brown ring around the inside of it.
“Ugh. Who did their cleaning?” I recoiled from the artifact.
“They didn’t have Mr. Clean or bleach then.” Anna Marie plopped into the backseat and yanked her door shut.
“Well, still. Yuck.” I shivered.
Cole pulled his seatbelt around. “Are you the proud new owners of the Addams Family Mansion?”
I clicked my seatbelt into place. “It’s a beautiful house. Full of potential.”
“Full of molesters,” Cole said under his breath.
“What?” Shelby said.
“What’s he talking about?” Kaitlyn faced us as Shelby put the deed of trust in a cubby.
I took Cole’s hand to ease his anxiety. “Let’s just put it this way. It needs exorcising.”
“Shush. You’ll piss off the spirit. They have a tendency of falling in love with people, then following them around for innumerable years afterward.” Cole’s wry expression said he was done talking about my secret, not so transparent admirer.
“Not funny.” I pulled his hand into my lap.
“Did you have a ghostly encounter you haven’t told us about?” Shelby’s brow perked in the rearview.
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