by Ann Charles
Not without paying for it. I started sweating between my toes. “Doc.” Don’t stop! “Stop.”
His hands moved to the outer edges of my shoulders, kneading my upper arms.
Oh, sweet Jesus! I let my head loll back, resting on the seatback, and peeked up at him. Much more of this and I’d risk having my library card permanently revoked for lewd behavior. “Doc, I can’t handle this.”
His eyes locked onto mine, his hands stopped. “Neither can I. Maybe it’s for the best to end it now.”
Wait. His tone was all wrong. “Are we talking about the same thing?”
“I think so.”
“What are we going to do about it?”
“Stick to friendship.”
I lunged forward, pulling free from his grip. “Hold on a second. I was talking about sex, right now.” As in not having it in the library.
“So am I.”
“No, you’re talking about us and sex later.”
“Or not.”
Wow, if that wasn’t just a cooler of ice-filled Gatorade poured down my underwear. “This is about that control issue of yours, isn’t it?”
“Violet.” He leaned on the edge of the table again and rubbed his jaw, the stubble rasping under his palm. “Whether or not you believe it, I have the ability to detect ghosts. And the reason I came to this town was to refine it. To control it, instead of it controlling me.”
He looked at me as if that should explain everything.
It didn’t. “What does that have to do with you and me?”
“You mess with my head.”
“You say that as if I’m Pandora, box in hand.”
“No, more like a Siren.”
“I’m not trying to lure you anywhere.” Except to bed. And maybe the back stairwell of his new house. Possibly the kitchen counter. Not that I’d put much thought into this.
“Probably not on purpose,” he crossed his arms. “But you’re a distraction.”
“Damn.” That one had a kick to it—to the gut. “You sure know how to sweet talk a girl.”
His frown deepened, lining his cheeks now, too. “When you’re around, I lose my focus. I can’t concentrate on what I need to.”
“Which is this elusive control you’re so determined to gain?”
“Exactly. I used to deny this shit in my head, fight it. At my lowest point, I tried to hide from it inside a bottle of Jack Daniels.” He shook his head. “That didn’t work. I realized I had to learn to control it, before it killed me.”
My stomach churned, stirring with frustration and anger. “And I represent what? Chaos?”
He nodded. “You like to leap without looking first, like with this latest house. Right now, it’s just too much for me to handle.”
Fire crawled up my throat, making me want to fry him with Godzilla-like, atomic heat-ray breath. Chaos? A distraction? Too much to handle? I didn’t ask for this thing going on between us. I didn’t enjoy the anxiety that came with it. And I sure as hell didn’t like being made to feel like a high-maintenance hassle.
“Let me explain something to you, Mr. Nyce.” I closed the distance between us, grabbed his hand, and placed it just above my left breast. “This is my heart. It’s cast-iron tough. It doesn’t fall in love on a whim—as a matter of fact, it’s never even been in love—and it sure as hell doesn’t need a man to make it feel whole. But it does beat loud and strong for my two children, for whom I am responsible both physically and financially.”
“Violet, don’t...” His brows drawn, he tried to pull his hand away, but I wouldn’t let go.
“And while I made a promise to you that I would not sell the Carhart house, I broke that promise because those two children have needs, which are my job to fulfill. I don’t expect you to understand my willingness to take this risk because you are only responsible for yourself, and as you just made crystal clear, that’s all you can handle.”
I let go of his hand, snatched up my purse, and backed toward the door. “Now, since you have explained how I am a burden to you—”
He reached toward me. “Violet, that’s not what I said.”
“—this is as much of the ‘truth’ about my reasons for being in this room today as you need to know.”
Before I gave in to my rage and strung him up by his testicles, I hightailed my rejected ass out of the building.
Chapter Six
Friday, August 3rd
Bighorn Billy’s really needed to change its breakfast menu. This morning, I started with black coffee and planned to order grapefruit. Both matched my mood—a little bitter and sour as hell.
Charlie Daniels and his crew blasted from the overhead speakers, singing about the devil heading down to Georgia. They were wrong. The devil was here in Deadwood, sniffing out ghosts, sexing me up, kicking me to the curb. And now he was calling me repeatedly without leaving any messages when I refused to answer.
“Are you okay, Vi?” Mona frowned at me across the table as she stirred sugar into her coffee. Her pink cashmere summer sweater matched her hair scarf. “You look a tad ...”
“Bitchy,” Ray finished from his seat on the bench next to her, his icy blue eyes challenging me. He really shouldn’t poke the bear today. He could lose a limb, most likely his third leg.
Mona aimed a glare at Ray before turning back to me, her smile soft on her cheeks. “I was going to say frazzled. Did you have a rough night?”
“Sort of.” Sailing a skiff through a hurricane would have been less wearing. Between tossing and turning about today’s weekly brunch with my boss and coworkers—during which I’d have to fess up about taking on the Carhart place—and grinding my molars over Doc’s control issues, I’d counted enough sheep to cover the surface area of Montana.
“Prostituting yourself for sales is a tough marketing scheme, Blondie. You have to learn to swallow your pride.”
I wasn’t in the mood to trade insults this morning. “Fuck off, Ray.”
He tsk-tsked me. “Such language in front of your boss.”
Shit! I looked over my shoulder to find the owner of Calamity Jane Realty frowning, her eyes shifting between Ray and me. “Sorry, Jane. Ray and I are just exchanging some friendly banter.”
She shrugged and dropped onto the bench seat next to me. The fruity floral and vanilla scent of her favorite perfume temporarily blanketed the smell of fried food. “A deaf and blind sloth could sense the tension between you two.” She held up her coffee cup for the hovering waitress to fill. “Love or hate, I don’t care, so long as you both make sales. Just keep it hidden from the customers. If I catch either of you badmouthing the other in public, you’re out the door.”
Ray and I exchanged lip curls while Jane unloaded her briefcase’s contents and Mona shot flirty glances at the table full of burly bikers next to us.
“On that note,” Jane flipped open her well-used day-planner, “Let’s start today’s meeting with some more unpleasant truths.”
I gulped, worrying that Jane had caught wind of my secret. Of course, the waitress decided to step up and take orders at that moment, prolonging my torment. I should have asked for a side of Maalox.
Finally, Jane picked up where she’d left off. “Our pipeline is down to a trickle. Our buyer-to-seller ratio is one-to-four at the moment. The economy is still bleak as a nuclear winter. And to top it all off, the Deadwood Historical Society has come out with a new list of rules for real estate agents.”
All three of us groaned. The society’s goals were generally benevolent and geared to the town’s welfare, but its red tape was sometimes like the rest of Deadwood’s history—legendary.
“So, now that you know the score, tell me how you plan to turn this month’s numbers into pluses and put your name on our ‘Sold’ white board.”
Jane’s lust for bulletin boards and dry-erase markers was surpassed only by her love for to-do lists and detailed marketing plans. She was so left-brained that her right brain had given up the battle for control and settled for an unpai
d intern position.
“Mona.” Jane held her pen over her notepad. “You go first.”
As Mona spewed out an elaborate scheme to lure fat-walleted tourists, that involved open houses filled with biker memorabilia and hosted by local celebrities, my anxieties cranked up the heat and spun me slowly over open flames. I broke out in a dew that would make many a spring morning jealous. I had no elaborate plans, no brilliant designs, no customer-snaring schemes. I specialized in reactive scrambling and desperation-fueled clambering.
Ray went next, explaining the several high-priced luncheons he’d planned with some of the area’s wealthiest citizens. He finished his pitch with a fastball straight up the middle that incorporated gold-plated buyer “rewards” for those who signed a contract.
That left me, sitting in a pool of my own sweat.
“What about you, Violet?” Jane asked as the waitress set my grapefruit in front of me. “You’re fresh out of school. What tricks did you learn that you can share?”
The only trick I knew involved a fake flower that squirted water. “Well, uh ...” I inspected my spoon for smudges. “I have one idea.”
“Yes?” Jane prompted.
If only I had the power to stop time long enough to come up with something brilliant. “I’m going to sell Wanda Carhart’s house,” I blurted, my heart break-dancing.
Mona groaned.
Ray cursed me under his breath.
Jane’s smile flat-lined. “You do know it’s haunted.”
I almost fell out of the booth. “Excuse me?”
“It’s haunted.”
“You’re messing with me, right?”
“Have you ever known me to joke?”
No. Jane was made up of equal parts salt and earth. I glanced at Mona and Ray; they wore matching grim expressions. My grip slackened, the spoon clattered onto the table. “Define what you mean by ‘haunted’.”
Jane shrugged. “Paranormal activity.”
I gaped at Mona, seeking reality.
“Whispy beings,” Mona added, then sipped her coffee.
“Dead folks, Blondie,” Ray said. “Or rather all the crazy shit they leave behind.”
I pinched myself. My eyes watered in pain, but the time continuum rolled on while I sat there catching flies in my open mouth. Had Doc been whispering in their ears? Did they all really believe in this? Was there a hidden video camera focused on me?
“I take it you already have a signed listing agreement,” Jane said, scribbling something in her notebook.
I nodded. My tongue seemed to have fallen out of my yawning jaw and rolled under the table.
“So what’s your plan on how to unload the Carhart place?” Jane asked.
“Wait a second. Back up. You guys believe in ghosts?”
Ray looked bored. “Yes, Blondie. Can we move on?”
Mona mimed a “shush” and nudged her head toward the biker table. “We talked about this last month, remember?”
“No. When?”
“When I told you about Lilly Devine’s place. You know, the prostitute who was murdered in her own bedroom by her john.”
“You said it was rumored to be haunted, not that you believe you can play patty-cake with her ghost.”
“Oh. I thought you understood that I was serious.”
“No. I didn’t.” Now that I remembered, Doc did get a bit agitated about the basement when I was touring him through that place, insisting I not go down there. “If you guys are serious, why am I the one with the notorious ghost-chatting reputation?”
“We keep pretty quiet about it,” Mona said.
Ray snorted. “We don’t go signing listing agreements for well-known haunted houses, either.”
Chills peppered my arms. I looked back to Jane, my rock, my foundation. “Jane? You really think the Carhart place is haunted?”
“Yes.”
She hadn’t even hesitated.
“Why? How? By whom?”
Sighing, she placed her pen on her day-planner and pushed her reading glasses to the top of her head. “The house next to the Carhart place was one of my first listings back when I was still a greenhorn. But I can remember that sale clear as vodka. The couple had lived there for all six decades of their marriage. They’d seen a lot change in Lead in their time and had all kinds of photos to prove it. They also had photos of the house next door, both of the living and not-so-living owners.”
“They had pictures?”
“Several.”
“What did the ghost look like?” It was probably just a glare on the lens, a haloed sparkle from a reflection. I’d seen stills on television shows about ghost hunters. Most of the ghosts looked the same, like Tinker Bell’s glow.
“She had on a pale, high-collared dress stained dark with blood from where her neck had been slit open.” Jane lowered her glasses back in place and picked up her pen. “Now, what’s your game plan?”
* * *
I couldn’t return to the office when I left Bighorn Billy’s. No way. For one thing, I was still trying to pick my jaw up off the ground after learning my seemingly normal coworkers and boss all believed in ghosts. For another, if I returned to my desk, I’d be too busy sneaking shell-shocked peeks at each of them to get any work done. Most importantly, though, was that Doc might be waiting for me to show up, and I wasn’t ready to look him in the eyes and pretend I could handle just being his friend.
Instead, I decided to head over to Jeff Wymonds’ place and get a head start on prepping it for sale. It needed a lot of work just to get it out of an “OMG, run!” state and into the “Needs TLC” category. A couple extra hours of work on my part would do some good.
Jeff’s truck was not in the dirt drive when I rolled up in a cloud of dust. I had a key to get into the house, but I hesitated, my brain still stumbling over my lunchtime pseudo-séance. I needed to touch base with reality—realign my chakras, as Natalie would say. Or was it rebalance? Thinking of Natalie, I dug out my cell phone and pulled up her number.
She answered on the third ring. “Howdy, pilgrim.”
I smiled. “Natalie, how many times do I have to tell you that your John Wayne impersonation sounds like Mae West? You really must stop this blasphemy of the Duke.”
“John Wayne.” She sighed like a teenage girl daydreaming about a first kiss. “Six foot, four inches of rugged, sexy male flesh. Reminds me of Doc Nyce.”
Oh, Jeez! Not that again. I had no stomach for this subject, so I changed it. “Natalie, do you believe in ghosts?”
“Sure, why not?”
She said it as if we were talking about bubble gum. “Seriously?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
I squeezed the bridge of my nose. “You guess? What the hell kind of an answer is that?”
“What’s wrong with you? Did you see one or something?”
“No.” Apparently I was the only one who hadn’t. “Have you?”
“I don’t know.”
“How can you not know?”
“I’ve had some iffy moments.”
Iffy moments with a ghost? “Explain, please.”
“Well, there was that night back in high school when a bunch of us sneaked into an old abandoned mill back in Rochford to smoke some weed and something shattered one of the windows.”
“It was probably just a bat.”
“And then in my mid-twenties, I was re-roofing an old home back in Galena, and when I went into the attic to check on something, this creepy old baby stroller rolled across the floor toward me.”
“How far?”
“I don’t know. Two or three inches.”
“You probably just bumped it on the way past and didn’t realize it. Or you made the floorboard bend enough to cause it to roll.”
There was silence from the other end. Then: “Are you going to explain away all of my near-experiences? I thought this was my opinion you were asking for.”
“Sorry. But I struggle with believing ghosts exist.”
“Who’s askin
g you to?”
I couldn’t mention Doc’s name. Not to her, not to anyone. I’d promised. “Nobody. It just came up at work this morning and got me thinking.” I covered my nose so she wouldn’t see it twitching, then remembered I was on the phone.
“I wonder what sex would be like with a ghost,” Natalie said.
“You’ve seen too many movies.”
“Maybe, but if you had the opportunity, would you?”
“It’s physically impossible, Nat.”
“You don’t know that. There may be some kind of energy flow that could go between you and the ghost.”
No way were we really talking about this while I sat in Jeff’s drive, perspiring under the late-morning sunshine.
“I would do it in a flash,” she said.
“You’re a sex addict, I swear.”
“It’s not my fault Doc is playing hard to get. Oh! Did I tell you we’re going out this weekend? Wish me luck.”
No! My heart seized up. “What? You’re going on a date?” That rotten bastard!
“Well, not officially. He’s going to go through my taxes and files for the last few years to help me get things straightened out. He suggested we meet at his office, but I insisted we go off-site.”
Okay, maybe he’s not much of a bastard, but still ... “Lovely. You two have fun.”
“I have a surprise for him,” she said in an excited tone, obviously missing the snarl in mine. “Do you know if he likes chocolate?”
“Nope.” We hadn’t reached the gift-of-foods level in our relationship before he’d terminated it.
“Because I found a pair of these naughty edible chocolate—”
“I gotta go, Nat.” I cut her off before I had a coronary from jealousy spasms. “I’ll call you later.”
“Okay. Don’t forget about your blind date tomor—”
I hung up on her and practically fell out of the Bronco in my rush to escape the images she’d put in my head of her and Doc entwined, let alone the reminder that I had to spend tomorrow evening with a Captain Kirk wannabe. At least, I hoped for Kirk and not a night spent sitting across from a Klingon.