"Oh, darling. I wish I had seen it." Ham did all he could to restrain his laughter. "And I take it from your vexation that he was not swayed."
"No. He was not. He — he walked right through me." Cory looked at him, an odd expression on her face. "It was most disconcerting, Ham. For the briefest of moments I had the sensation of being warm."
"That is odd, darling. I'm certain I can't explain it."
"Well, neither can I. And I'm not at all certain I like it." Cory pouted prettily, and Ham had the strongest desire to kiss her pursed lips though he knew that nothing could come of it. After over a hundred years of trying to make love to his wife, Ham had finally given up. The spirit had been more than willing, but without flesh… He chuckled at his joke.
Cory folded her arms across her breast, her chin tilted endearingly. "It is not the least bit humorous, Hamilton Benjamin Jordan. I was trying to rid our home of unwanted pests, and all you do is laugh about it."
"I wasn't laughing about that, Cory dearest." He sighed, wondering if his own experiment at haunting had been effective. "And we'll just have to think of another way of frightening him away."
****
Ben wandered back upstairs after his less than productive conversation with Corrie. She might have been able to explain away what he'd felt earlier, but he wasn't so sure she'd been on the mark. Yes, he'd concede that he could have felt her watching him, and he had to admit that he had been flattered that she had been. Maybe, he could make the trip more than just research.
He had to chuckle. He could probably have his pick of the co-eds on the campus, but he'd made it a rule to stay away from them no matter how persistent or attractive. After he'd ruled out students, that left faculty. Most of them were married, and those that weren't, were… well… He shook his head. He had to get out more. It had been a long, long time since he'd been out with an attractive woman of his own age.
Maybe now was the time.
He tossed his room key in the air and caught it as he retraced his steps through the gallery, wondering why he should even bother to lock his room. He was the only guest on the floor. And if Corrie wanted to take anything — or him — she could.
An intriguing thought, but only a thought. Ben shook the notion from his head as he neared his door. He paused a moment in the area where he'd felt the chill. Nothing. But then, he didn't hear the air conditioner running either. He went on and inserted his key in the lock, but stopped mid-turn.
Come to think of it, he hadn't heard the air conditioner going earlier, either.
****
Corrie stood, her elbow propped on the counter, her chin resting on her hand, thinking. What if Ham and Cory really were still inhabiting Venable House? She sighed. That didn't seem so bad. But why hadn't anyone noticed them in the past century?
"What planet are you on, Corrie?"
Corrie jerked out of her thoughts. "What? Oh, Vanessa. Did you want something?"
"I wanted a partner who's in the here and now. Sugar, you got it bad. I've been talking to you for the last five minutes, and you haven't heard a word I said." Vanessa stood at her full height, looking elegant and indignant.
"I'm sorry. I was thinking about something." Corrie felt the color rise to her cheeks and lowered her eyes. Her lily white complexion was such a nuisance.
"About the handsome professor, no doubt." Vanessa glanced to the gallery above and the location of the Magnolia Room. "I don't blame you. He's one fine piece of man. And a big improvement over Darrell."
"I wasn't thinking about Ben," Corrie responded, too defensively to sound convincing. "And Darrell isn't the issue now. I was thinking about the ghosts." And Ben, at least indirectly, but mostly the ghosts of Ham and Cory.
Vanessa pulled the office door shut behind her and crossed to the counter where Corrie stood. She placed a dark hand on Corrie's forehead and left it there a moment before she moved it. "Nope. You don't have a fever. So I guess you're not delirious." She punched Corrie lightly on the arm. "But you have to be sick to be thinking about a bunch of dead people when you have a gorgeous hunk of flesh-and-blood man right up there." She tipped her head toward the gallery.
Corrie's eyes followed Vanessa's gaze upward. She sighed. "I wish he'd never come here."
Vanessa jerked her head back and stared, her almond-shaped, ebony eyes wide. "Come again? You can't mean that you're not interested in him? You'd have to be dead as your ghosts not to be. Darrell really must have done a number on you."
Darrell, her ex-fiancé, had been a mistake. She hardly even thought about him. She did, however, spend a lot of time lately thinking about those possible ghosts — and the ghost hunter. "Do you realize that before Dr. Benjamin H. Chastain arrived here, everything was going fine? Now he shows up and registers start to disappear, and he's trying to produce ghosts. I don't like it, Nessa. I don't like it one bit."
"Just as long as you like him." Vanessa shrugged her bag off her shoulder and dug around inside. "In case you haven't noticed, girlfriend, it's quittin' time."
Corrie glanced at her watch and nodded, but said nothing.
"I'm going home. I'll see you at 6:30 tomorrow morning to fix breakfast for our first customer. In the meantime, don't do anything I wouldn't do." Vanessa grinned. "Scratch that. Try doing something that I would do for a change. Like making a play for Dr. Chastain."
"Go home, Vanessa," Corrie responded tiredly. "I can hardly go around making passes at all the guests. Before long, we'd be investigated by the vice squad."
"Not all the guests, girlfriend. Just one." Vanessa slung her purse over her shoulder and, jingling her keys in her long, elegant fingers, strutted out the front door.
Covering her face in her hands, Corrie sighed. "Corrine Venable Wallace, what have you gotten yourself into?" She looked up as Vanessa's car passed the front window. "If you're so interested in him, why don't you take him?"
****
Ben Chastain paced the spacious room and wondered why he hadn't yet sensed evidence of Venable House's late inhabitants. He would have bet that he'd find something. Ham and Cory's story was too unusual and too unexplained for there not to be some manifestation of them somewhere on the premises. True, Ham and Cory had only been visitors when they'd died, but still, dying on one's honeymoon would be as traumatic to the newly dead as to any newlyweds. He had to be missing something.
He took one last look out the window to the stately magnolias then abruptly turned. If the answer were going to be anywhere, surely it would be in the Honeymoon Suite. He yanked open his closed door and hurried into the gallery and over to the adjacent room.
The door was open as it had been before, affording him an excellent view of the room. It was similar in decor to the one assigned to him: canopied bed on the inner wall, a large mahogany chifforobe on one side of the room, and a corresponding chiffonnier on the other. The only difference, he'd read in the tourist brochure, was that this room had its own private bath. The others shared baths which had access through the gallery.
Ben paused for a moment at the threshold, emptying his mind of any negative thoughts, then stepped inside. He closed his eyes to decrease the possibilities of any distracting visual input, but he sensed nothing. The room seemed as dead as the couple who'd died there. He opened his eyes. Something was wrong. He'd felt more life in a bank vault.
He allowed himself another moment to absorb the emptiness of the room then wheeled and left.
If there were any ghosts in the Venable Inn, they weren't in the Honeymoon Suite.
Discouraged, he entered his own room. Compared to the Honeymoon Suite, this room felt cheerful and full of love. For a moment, he thought he could hear the merry sound of a woman's laughter. He could almost see the souls of everyone who had ever lived and loved in this room. How could one room seem so devoid of life and the other so full of it?
It went against everything he'd ever pieced together about the spirit world in the last twenty years. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe Ham and Cory Jordan were safely at rest in the family
plot out back, and there was no story of enduring love, only a tragic tale. He crossed to the French doors.
Noticing the lengthening shadows across the lawn and the hollowness of his stomach, Ben decided to suspend his thoughts about Ham and Cory and look for something to eat. Though breakfast was included in part of the hotel package, the Venable Inn did not serve dinner. He'd have to ask one of the lovely owners where he might find a meal.
The thought of seeing Corrie Wallace again was not unpleasant. Ben hadn't brought his bag up from the car, so all he could do was finger comb his hair out of his face to get ready. That done, he pocketed his room key and hurried down the stairs.
No one was at the front desk, but Ben detected the faint click of an electric typewriter or computer from behind the half-closed door at the rear of the desk. Wondering what type of work could keep the two women so busy so soon after opening, he rang the bell and waited.
Corrie Wallace poked her head through the crack. "I'll be with you in a minute." Then she ducked back inside.
Ben waited, drumming his fingers impatiently on the counter while Corrie finished whatever she was doing. His eyes strayed to a framed black and white photograph on the wall to the right of the desk. Without having to ask, he knew it was of Ham and Cory. And the conclusion wasn't made because the couple depicted was dressed in what were obviously wedding clothes; it could have been anyone's wedding portrait.
Without thinking, he moved behind the reception desk to take a closer look. A smiling woman and a solemn man peered back at him. The style of the clothing would seem right for a century ago. He traced the outline of the pair as he studied the picture.
"Our tragic couple," Corrie murmured from behind him.
Ben had been so engrossed in studying the picture that he hadn't heard her return. He turned slowly. In the waning light of late afternoon, he saw something that he might not have noticed at another time of day; the shadows mimicked the harsh lighting in the picture and emphasized the striking resemblance between the current Corrie and the late one.
Corrie reached around him and took the picture down. She brushed at an invisible speck of dust then handed the portrait to Ben. "My grandfather always insisted that I look like her. I never saw the resemblance, but enough people say it that I guess it must be true."
Ben glanced into Corrie's face then back to the picture. The clothing and hairstyles were different, of course, but other than that, the two women could have been sisters. Twins. "Your grandfather was right." He handed the photograph back to Corrie. "Tell me. Did he know them?"
Placing the framed photo back on the hook, Corrie shook her head. "I think they had been dead twenty years or so before he was born, so no. Let's see…" She paused to think a moment. "Grandaddy was Cory's younger brother Marcus' son. He had another brother, Carter, who died in World War II and a sister, Aunt Sibby. Everybody used to say that Sibby was the spittin' image of Corrie, and that I was the spittin' image of her. So I guess I'll just have to take their word." She shrugged.
Ben smiled and ran his fingertips over the cool glass that protected the faded photograph. "You don't have to take anybody's word. You have the proof right here in black and white." Ben shuddered as a chill passed through him. "Look." He gently traced the curve of her jaw and the line of her cheekbones with the heel of his hand, noticing absently that Corrie seemed to turn into his caress. "You have the same bone structure."
Suddenly, Ben realized what he had been doing and dropped his hand. He swallowed, wondering if an apology was in order. "I'll bet she even had the same color hair," he finished thickly.
"She was supposed to have been a carrot top," Corrie answered hesitantly. She drew a breath and shook her head as if trying to dislodge a thought. "You rang the bell?"
Maybe it was good that Corrie had changed the subject. Ben didn't know what had just happened, but something sure had. For the life of him, he couldn't see how it could have had anything to do with Ham and Cory. Or maybe he just didn't want it to. Corrie Wallace was too real, too warm. "I wanted you to suggest a good place for supper."
Corrie flashed a grin, obviously as relieved at the change of tone as he. She reached into a cubbyhole behind the desk and retrieved a printed sheet from a stack. "This is a list of the local places that might interest you. We haven't included fast food restaurants, though there are plenty of them once you get into civilization." She pointed to a rough map at the bottom of the page. "We're here. If you head that way you can't miss."
Ben took the sheet from Corrie, careful not to let their fingers touch. After what had so recently happened, he was afraid that another innocent brush of hands might throw him over the edge. What edge, he didn't know. Ben glanced again at it to get his bearings, then folded it and put it in his pocket. "Thanks. I'll see you later." He deposited the room key on the desk and turned.
****
As soon as Ben walked out the door, Corrie wished she could call him back. There was no reason for him to drive miles to find food when he could share her dinner here. Just because the bed and breakfast didn't provide dinner to the guests didn't mean that she couldn't share hers… with Ben.
After another moment of indecision, she hurried to the front door and flung it open, letting in the heated afternoon air. Shading her eyes from the bright, but sinking sun, she scanned the premises for Ben. She should have heard his motor start by now unless his engine ran so smooth and quiet that he'd already gone, and she'd missed him. But no, the immaculate vintage Mustang was still in the shaded parking area.
Ben was not.
A twig snapped, echoing loudly in the solitary quiet, and Corrie looked toward the sound. There she spotted Ben Chastain just coming around the corner from the rear of the house. Her hand went involuntarily to her mouth as she gasped with surprise. "I thought you'd gone," she murmured when Ben came close enough.
Ben looked up, his blue eyes twinkling. "Caught me red-handed."
"Doing what?" Corrie pretended to be frightened, though she wondered if it was a pretense. Her rapid pulse and irregular heartbeat seemed genuine enough. "Should I call the police?" She arched a brow as she looked down on him from her perch at the top the steps. Ben looked far from guilty about anything. Except, perhaps, looking too handsome for his own good.
"Admiring your grounds. You have an impressive collection of heirloom plants here. It must've taken a lot of effort to put it together." He inclined his head toward the flower beds that Corrie had worked so hard on.
She smiled, not displeased that someone had noticed her handiwork. "Not really. This house has been in Venable hands since it was built and all of us claim the gift of green. Thumbs that is. It's been well tended all that time, so I had a lot to work with. Most of the specimens you see were here all along. All I had to do was divide some of the overgrown clumps and order a few things to fill in the gaps."
Ben bent to examine a striking plant of the lily family bearing brilliant, scarlet blooms. "This is lovely, but I don't recognize it. Is it a new one, or one of the old faithfuls?" He reached to pluck a bloom then stopped. He glanced at Corrie. "May I?"
She nodded, surprised that a man would take so much interest in antique plants. "It's a St. Joseph's lily. They've been blooming here as long as I can remember. All I did was dig up some of the bulbs and replant them where I wanted them."
Ben handed the lily to her. "They're as lovely as their owner." He rocked back on his heels, stuck his hands in his pockets, and gazed openly at her.
Corrie felt her face redden to the roots of her hair. She might get used to receiving compliments like this if Ben stayed around. For fifty years or so. But still, his attention embarrassed her. "Thank you," she murmured. She raised the bloom to her nose and breathed in the soft, warm fragrance. "Can I ask you something?"
He looked startled. "Sure."
"You seem to know a lot about these things yourself." She nodded toward the plants. "How come?"
Ben chuckled. "I financed my master's degree working for a landscapin
g service. At first all I did was the dirty work, but after a while I got interested in the plants. Particularly heirloom plants. I have a few in my own yard at home."
"Oh. I may have to come to you for advice." Corrie glanced toward the lilies, then down to the bricked steps. Anywhere but at Ben.
Ben shifted and glanced toward his car. "Well, I'd best go. It's late and I'm hungry." He turned in the direction of the parking area.
Against her better judgment, or perhaps in accordance with it, Corrie cleared her throat. "If you'd prefer not to drive to town and eat alone, you can join me here." She held her breath as she waited for Ben's reply.
His answer was slow in coming, or so it seemed to Corrie, holding her breath, or at least slowing her breathing.
Ben smiled slow and incredibly sexy. "I'd like very much to have dinner with you, Corrie Wallace. Thank you."
Corrie exhaled, surprised that she had indeed been holding her breath. "It won't be anything fancy. Just salad and pasta." She smiled back, not knowing whether to be apologetic or proud of her light dinner. Ben was muscled enough to be a meat and potatoes man, but she had nothing thawed, and the only meat she had on hand right now was a package of frozen boneless chicken breasts.
"Sounds great." He started up the steps toward her, and Corrie backed toward the door. "Pasta is one of my favorites."
Relief flooded her. Even if the meatless sauce didn't turn out to be to his liking tonight, maybe she could redeem herself with a perfectly grilled fillet mignon some other day. If there was to be another day, she reminded herself as she led Ben inside.
"I have to confess I've been curious about what goes on behind that closed door," Ben confided as Corrie pushed the door in question and beckoned him inside.
Corrie laughed. "Nothing sinister, I assure you. It's just a garden-variety office." She waved her hand toward the two computer terminals and the equipment attendant to it.
"Maybe for the Silicon Valley, but isn't it a little high tech for two ladies who run a B and B in south Alabama? I wish my office were so well equipped."
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