by Jenny Lykins
"A Christmas tree!"
Alane pulled a small, lush, magnificent fir from the top of the car, then expertly grabbed the trunk and headed back to the house.
"You got this for me, didn't you? This is the surprise! I know it is because you don't do real trees. This is wonderful! You couldn't have picked a better gift."
He passed through the wall and chattered at her from the other side of the screendoor. With a grimacing smile, she struggled at the door but couldn't let go of the tree to grab the knob.
He reached out his hand, focusing to push open the door for her.
"Don't even think about it," she ordered from the porch. "I can get it."
With a healthy kick to the bottom, the door slammed hard against the frame and bounced open a little. She hooked the toe of her boot in the opening, flicked it wider, then pushed it all the way back with her foot. Seconds later she'd squeezed through the doorway and stood the tree in the corner. With a satisfied nod, she dusted off her hands and smiled up at him.
"I am woman. Hear me roar."
Did she possibly know how much an impish smile like that made him want to kiss her? He hated to think what would happen if she ever turned a smoky, heated gaze on him. Probably enjoy his last few seconds on earth touching her in ways she'd only dreamed of, then die all over again of ecstasy.
"What?" she asked with a slightly uncomfortable look.
"I was just thinking how kissable you look right now."
Her eyebrows shot skyward and she side-stepped around him.
"In your dreams, big boy. I don't want to go through another night like last night. Now get in the Christmas spirit, no pun intended, and show me where they hide the decorations."
He must be back to normal, since he was already planning how to sap his strength again. But he'd promised her. With a sigh, he dragged his thoughts away from how nice her mouth tasted and tried to remember where the owners had stored the Christmas decorations back in...what? 1986? 1996? 2006?
"Gotta be in the closet," he mumbled, more to himself than to Alane. "There's no other storage place unless it's in the building out back."
He walked through the door and into the closet's depths, strolling through a vacuum cleaner, lawn chairs, umbrellas, a badminton game, and an assortment of junk collected over the years. Scanning with his night vision, he found two boxes of decorations in the farthest corner under two old suitcases and a bag of old clothes.
Without bothering to go back to the door, he stuck his head through the wall and found Alane moving furniture around, making room for the tree.
"You want the good news or the bad news?"
She bumped a heavy table a few more feet with her hip, then straightened and raked a silky blond strand behind her ear.
"I don't do bad news."
"Okay. The good news is the decorations are in here."
She looked at the door, then dragged her gaze six feet along the wall to where his head protruded.
"Let me guess," she groaned. "You're standing in the middle of them and there's not exactly a clear path back there."
"Give the lady a prize!"
When she walked to the closet and opened the door, he pulled his head back in and waved at her.
"Down here, under the stairs."
Alane flicked on the light and groaned again.
"Oh well." After dragging the heavy, dark green sweater over her head, she shoved the sleeves of her pale mint turtleneck up to her elbows and started pulling junk from the closet. Halfway back she stopped and dragged a hand across her cheek, leaving behind a brown smudge. His heart melted.
"How 'bout handing me that - " She stopped pointing at a large box of junk and thumped her head with the heel of her hand. "Duh!" She giggled and kept plowing her way through. "I forget sometimes that you can't...well, you know. Not that it makes any difference..."
Alane kept talking but Jared didn't hear her words.
He couldn't even hand her something. Couldn't help ease her life in any tangible way at all. Hell, he couldn't even open a door for her when she had her hands full. What was he doing, falling in love with this woman?
"Tada!" While he'd wallowed in self pity, she'd finished working her way to the boxes. "Just let me cram all this junk back in here and then we can do the fun stuff."
Jared made himself smile at her look of triumph. She lugged the boxes out of the closet, then set to work replacing what she'd taken out.
He wandered out of the closet and flopped into a chair. This was a mistake. This whole fiasco would never have happened if he'd controlled himself and remained cloaked throughout her visit.
But he hadn't bargained on falling in love.
"Oh, the weather outside is frightful," Alane sang in the most horrendous, off-key voice, "but the fire is so delightful..."
Jared grimaced but couldn't help smiling. How could he not love her? For the first time in his life - or death - he listened to his heart. Throwing off the self pity, he stood and followed her voice into the closet.
"Let it snow, let it snow, let it - GEEZ! Would you stop doing that?"
*******
Alane propped her feet up on the coffee table and scooped up a handful of popcorn. She gestured for the third time that night toward the tree.
"Not bad, if I do say so myself."
"A work of art," Jared agreed, also for the third time.
They both looked at each other and burst out laughing. The tree was the sorriest Christmas tree she'd ever seen. The box had contained every hideous decoration that had ever been made, from silk-covered balls that had frayed to furriness, to neon orange glass balls, to Elvis ornaments. And only one lonely little string of lights worked after she'd tested a dozen.
She smiled up at him. It felt strange to sit so close to someone and not be able to snuggle up with him.
He smiled down at her and scrunched deeper into the couch, crossing his legs at the ankles, his feet next to hers, and focusing his attention to the old movie on TV. He couldn't get enough of the old movies.
She'd spent a long night the night before, watching his weak form, thinking about what an impossible situation she'd gotten herself into. Falling in love with someone she couldn't touch; who couldn't touch her back. Someone who would never grow old and die. It was as hopeless as if she'd fallen in love with an imaginary lover.
And when she'd teased him earlier and told him to behave himself, sounding exactly like her mother. She'd ignored the voice in her head at first. The voice whispering about babies and motherhood. But she'd finally had to give in and listen. And think about never having babies. Would she never have the opportunity to put to use all that her mother had taught her? She'd had to ask herself which would be worse? Never having something she'd never had, or spending the rest of her life thinking about Jared. Loving and missing him, wondering about him and wanting to be with him so badly she would ache.
She'd finally accepted the fact that there would be no easy answer to this situation. She would just live her life one day at a time, make decisions as they were presented to her, and pray whatever decision she made would be the best for both of them.
"Oh! Now, how insulting! Was that their idea of romantic back then?"
Alane pulled her dark, gloomy thoughts back to the cheery room lit by sparse Christmas tree lights and a cozy fire.
"What? What was insulting?"
"In this movie." Jared flicked a disdainful hand toward the TV. "These people are on their honeymoon, and Fred MacMurray asks his new wife - oh, what's her name? Claudette Colbert! He asks Claudette Colbert, 'Is your dress you're wearing to dinner very pretty?' and she says, 'Well, yes, I think so,' and he says, 'Because I want you to be the prettiest woman at dinner tonight.' And she melts all over him! Now I ask you, what kind of compliment is that?"
Before she could even absorb the question, let alone attempt an answer, he turned to her, his fierce gaze raking the length of her, taking in her scraggly pony tail, her turtleneck smudged with ten year old dus
t, her jeans, her feet clad in three pairs of jogging socks.
"You could walk into any room in the world right now and be the most beautiful woman there. Without, " his voice gentled as he traced his hand along her cheek, "even washing the dirt from your face."
Talk about melting. Alane could have trickled right off the couch just from his look.
"You're so sweet," she told him with a grin, "but you must be mentally disturbed."
His only answer was a grunt as he settled back to finish the movie.
"Tell me about yourself, Jared." She could almost feel him tense up at her question, but she forged on. "I don't want to dredge up painful memories, but I feel like this is something I need to know now. All I know about you is that you died two hundred years ago and that you had a wife. Did you have any children?" He continued to stare at the television, but she could tell he was no longer watching. After a while he blinked and a muscle flexed in his jaw.
"She was pregnant."
She swallowed back the first words of sympathy and fought the nauseating pitch of her stomach at the thought of another woman carrying his child. Even centuries ago.
"Did...she die in childbirth?"
He continued to stare at the happy couple on the television screen. His jaw flexed some more.
"Leave it be, Alane. You don't want to know the story."
"Yes. I do. What could possibly be so bad?" she questioned, then added jokingly, "Unless, of course, you killed her."
His features never changed, but he turned his head slowly and nailed her with dead, emotionless eyes. Tingles of icy spiders crawled up her spine and into her scalp. He couldn't have! Not Jared!
"Don't even try to convince me of that! I'll never believe you could murder anyone, especially a woman you loved."
He turned his gaze away, back to the TV. She picked up the remote and switched off the television, but he didn't seem to notice.
"Talk to me, damn it! The truth can't be as bad as what I could imagine." She'd give up everything she owned to be able to shake him right now. "Nothing will convince me you murdered your wife!"
"I didn't murder her, but I killed her. Her and our unborn baby."
Alane wanted to scream.
"Jared, look at me," she said in the calmest voice she could muster.
His head didn't turn, but he slid his gaze to her.
"You've got to tell me now. You can't drop something like that in my lap and then not explain. What happened? Tell me how she died. Start at the beginning. Hell, start anywhere, just tell me what happened."
Jared studied her face with cold, hopeless eyes. Finally, defeat shadowed his features and he drew in a deep, resigned breath.
"I didn't love her."
Alane was horrified with herself at the wave of relief she felt. She swept it away and prodded him to go on.
"Our parents wanted a union of families. She was the only daughter, and I was the only son. There was never any question. Back then children married who their parents told them to marry."
Alane only nodded, not wanting to interrupt him.
"She was in her seventeenth year. We married on my twenty-fifth birthday. I was fond enough of her. And I was gentle with her. I suppose I even grew to love her in time, but like a sister. I felt no passion for her, no matter how hard I searched my soul for it.
"She'd tried from our wedding night to conceive. But it took three years. She was nearly hysterical with worry, until it actually happened. By that time she'd changed from a sweet, gentle child to a possessive, clutching harridan."
He stopped for a moment, as if searching his soul. Alane was afraid to breathe. Afraid to break the spell and send him back into himself.
"One night I was going upstairs to dress. By that time I usually spent my evenings out, looking for...something...missing in my life. I'd tried to find it at home, but though Katherine had been a good wife, I could never give all of myself to her, nor accept everything she offered to give."
Katherine. Her name had been Katherine.
"She wanted me to stay home that night. Her parents were visiting, to celebrate the announcement of the child, but they'd been there a month and I desperately needed to get away. Katherine followed me up the stairs, begging me to stay. She grabbed my arm to stop me and I yanked it back." He jerked his arm, as if reliving the moment. "She lost her balance and fell backward. I tried to grab her," he reached out, trancelike, "but she pulled me with her. We fell. All I could hear through the pain was the thump of our bodies and the crunch of breaking bones, until we landed on the floor at the bottom of the stairs.
"When I opened my eyes, Katherine was dead. I knew it. I don't know how long I was unconscious, how long her parents and the servants stood over us. I looked up at her mother, standing there, sobbing. The last thing I remember was the pure venom in her voice as she cursed me. 'May your soul know no peace, Jared Elliott, until you give up your existence in the name of love.' I have wandered the earth ever since."
CHAPTER SIX
Jared finally dragged his gaze back to hers, braced for the disgust, the revulsion he knew would be in her eyes. But all her eyes held were shimmering tears. And love. Understanding, healing love.
"The curse," she whispered. "The curse is why you're a ghost." Then two lines creased her brow. "But, that means you have to cease existing for someone you love, in order to find peace."
He nodded. He'd had two hundred years to think about finding a loophole. There wasn't one.
"Oh, Jared," she began, but he stopped her with an upraised hand.
"No pity. I won't have it."
"But it was an accident! It's not fair - "
"It wasn't fair that Katherine died when she was twenty years old. Or that the baby she wanted so desperately never grew to even swell her belly." He draped one arm behind her on the sofa and traced her face with his other hand. "It hasn't been such a bad existence.” Until now, the words burned in his mind. Now, when I've found you, and all I can think about is touching you, holding you, what it would be like if things were different.
But he said none of these things, knowing they would leave her as raw and wounded as he.
She leaned her head back on the sofa, back into his arm. He closed his eyes and imagined he could feel her nestled against him.
"But to be so alone, " she went on.
"Alane, I spent a hundred and seventy-five years roaming all four corners of the earth. I watched the Civil War, from both sides. I was in Washington when Lincoln was shot and I watched as the doctors worked to save him. I was in England at Queen Elizabeth's coronation. I witnessed both World Wars from every country involved. I've wandered in and out of the Oval office during top secret discussions. I've seen the telephone, light bulb, radio and television born. I've seen the Wright brothers fly and watched a man walk on the moon." He stopped, took a breath, then gave her his best mischievous grin. "And I've contributed my share to all the ghost stories floating around this country."
Alane smiled a sad, unconvinced smile, but she didn't pursue the conversation. Her eyes drooped heavily, and for the first time he realized she looked exhausted.
"Whatever you say, Jared." She yawned an enormous yawn, then relaxed into the couch and closed her eyes. "I'm so tired."
Jared had forgotten how easily mortals tire, and she'd been awake most of the night before, worrying at his side. He watched her face relax into sleep; watched as shadows from the moon passed over her precious features. Then his breath caught in his throat and his heart lurched when she shifted, leaning into him so that he surrounded her. If he tried, he could imagine he was holding her.
He sat there, unmoving, savoring her presence, weaving a dream in his mind while she slept. And in the dream he was whole, and Alane came to him, loved him, touched him.
But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't remember how it felt to be touched.
*******
Alane snuggled deeper into the heavenly, melting warmth and tried to hold on to the misty dream of Ja
red kissing her, but brilliant sunlight prodded her awake. She felt for the covers to pull over her head.
She didn't remember climbing the stairs to go to bed last night. And where were the covers?
She pried one reluctant eye open and peered at the living room through a blur. The fire had burned down to nothing more than a few glowing red coals, and she was lying on the couch without so much as a blanket to cover her.
Then why was she so warm?
Blinding sunlight bounced off the snow and burst through the eastern windows, bathing everything in a white light. It turned the lake into a giant, silvery reflecting pool.
She opened her other eye, then massaged them with the heels of her hands. Everything was still a blur.
"Good morning, sleepyhead."
The voice seemed to come from within her.
No. It came from around her.
Alane elbowed her way to a sitting position, feeling the chill of the room as she rose. Her vision cleared and she looked around.
Jared leaned into the very corner of the couch she'd just vacated. His grin was all little boy, but his eyes held the pain of a man who wanted something so badly he ached.
She should have been flustered when she realized she'd lain inside him. But instead she felt closer to him than ever. Connected somehow. When he sat up and swung his legs off the couch, it was as if he whisked away a warm summer breeze and replaced it with the chill air of the arctic.
"Do I have you to thank for keeping me warm all night?" she asked as she plucked her sweater from the end of the coffee table, shaken at the sense of loss she'd felt when he'd moved.
He wiggled his dark eyebrows at her in answer.
"Should I thank you for that dream I was trying not to wake up from, too?" Even as she asked, elusive remnants evaporated like wisps of fog in the sun.
"Not guilty on that count, counselor, but I could oblige you if you'd let me. If you'll remember, you banned me from your brain."
It occurred to her that she might consider lifting the ban for another dream like the one so rapidly fading from her mind.