by Meg Benjamin
“Emma, meet my sister, Rosie Ramos. Rosie, this is Emma Shea. I told you about her, remember?”
Rosie’s smile widened slightly, but she managed not to do anything really obnoxious, like wink. “Glad to meet you, Emma.”
Emma smiled back. “Me too. You have a wonderful house here.”
“I like it. Come on in.” She stepped back to let them pass, waggling her eyebrows in Ray’s direction when Emma wasn’t looking.
Emma headed into the living room, then paused. “Oh. Is he friendly?”
Ray blinked. Surely she wasn’t referring to him. Or Evan, assuming Evan was home from his book tour.
Beside him, Rosie suddenly came to a halt, her forehead furrowing. “Excuse me?”
“Your dog. Is he friendly? I like dogs, but, well, he’s huge.”
Ray stepped into the room behind her and came to a screeching halt. An immense black dog sprawled in front of the fireplace, staring at them sleepily. Its eyes were an odd shade of yellow—almost orange in the dim light. Except that dogs, even black dogs, didn’t have orange eyes, of course.
Rosie walked in behind them. She gazed back and forth between them for a moment, then shrugged. “That’s Helen. And yeah, she’s friendly. The only danger would be if she decided to lick you to death.”
The dog, Helen, rolled over, her tail thumping the floor so hard that the sound seemed to reverberate through the room. Ray reached down absentmindedly to scratch her ears. Her tail thumped harder.
“Okay, we just stopped by to drop off my stuff before we head to the Blue Star for dinner,” he explained. “We’ve been working at the house all day.”
“You can stick around here for dinner. I’ve got lots.” Rosie didn’t sound particularly enthusiastic about the idea.
“That’s okay. You want to join us at the Blue Star?” He figured he probably sounded about as enthusiastic as she did.
“Nope. Thanks anyway. I’ve got some work to do.”
He put his hand on Emma’s arm, steering her back toward the door. “Don’t wait up.”
“I probably won’t.” Rosie’s gave him a long look, her expression inscrutable. “Nice meeting you, Emma.”
“You too,” Emma managed as he guided her out the door.
He had no idea what was on his sister’s mind now, but whatever it was would keep. Right now all he wanted to do was have dinner with Emma Shea. And maybe go somewhere else for dessert.
Chapter 8
Emma figured one of these days they’d eat at a different restaurant, but right now she also figured speed was better than class. After all, she hadn’t had anything to eat all day, and that was sort of Ray’s fault since he hadn’t even thought about eating until she’d finally gotten tired of her grumbling stomach and made the pitch herself.
Of course she could have taken off for lunch by herself, but she hadn’t really wanted to. She wanted to stay close to him for reasons she couldn’t really define.
For the first five minutes after her snapper and steamed veggies arrived, she did nothing but eat until the gnawing hole in her middle seemed to have been partially filled. “Your sister’s nice,” she said between bites.
He shrugged. “Nice might not be the word I’d use, but she’s definitely one of a kind.”
“That’s quite a dog she has.”
He frowned. “Yeah. I don’t think that dog was around yesterday evening. I don’t remember seeing it.”
“Kind of hard to miss.”
“True that.”
She took another bite of fish, then remembered that she’d actually come to the Hampton house earlier in the day because she had something to show him. She reached into her purse, pulling out the notes she’d taken that morning. “I found something at the historical society. I don’t know how important it is, but it’s interesting.”
He speared a potato slice. “Go for it.”
“Okay, what we’ve got here is information about Mr. Alexander Grunewald, owner of your house from around 1913 until 1927.” She spread her notes on the table in front of her.
“And Mr. Grunewald is interesting because?”
“Because he owned the house, but he apparently didn’t live there. At least not for the last five years or so. He built a house in Alamo Heights in 1922. It was a showplace—I found newspaper articles about it. I’m not sure whether he lived in King William before that or not. He owned the Hampton house, but I didn’t find anything about him being active in the community.”
“Okay.” Ray leaned back in his chair, considering. “I guess I still don’t see why this is significant. He didn’t live in the house for at least five years before he sold it. So?”
“Well, the thing is, it’s a large, stylish house in the King William District. He wouldn’t have let it stand empty for five years. So who lived there?”
“Maybe he rented it out.”
“Maybe.” She sighed. “If I could find some census data, I might be able to find out who lived there at the time.”
“You might. But, again, why is this important?” He speared another piece of potato.
“Because it opens up some possibilities.” She leaned back in her chair, taking a swallow of her white wine, her single permissible glass of the day. “Maybe he had a mistress. Maybe he bought the house for her. Maybe they quarreled at some point. Maybe she died in the house. Hell, maybe he killed her.”
Ray stretched out his hands in front of him. “Whoa. That’s maybe getting a little ahead of the facts there.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” She raised her hand, counting on her fingers. “Look, we know we’ve got a female ghost, right?”
“Right.”
“And we know she’s got some kind of sexual hang-up, right?”
He looked acutely uncomfortable for a moment. She could swear the tips of his ears were pink. “Right.”
“And logically we figure she had some kind of connection to the house when she was alive, right?”
He sighed. “I guess.”
“And last but not least, we know that no woman ever owned the house, or at least that the deed was never in a woman’s name, so the ghost lady has to be associated with one of the men who did own it.” She sliced off another bite of snapper. “Looks pretty straight to me.”
He gave her a dry smile. “Not exactly, but I’ll grant you that this guy bears more investigating. What did Gracie say?”
She shrugged. “Gracie wasn’t there today. It was her day off. I’ll talk to her tomorrow.”
“Do that.” He gave her another slow smile. “Good work, Emma.”
Her cheeks heated up. He had one hell of a smile. “Thanks.”
“And now I don’t want to talk about that damn house again for the rest of the evening.” He took a long swallow of his beer. “Tell me about Missouri.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Missouri?”
“You’re from Kansas City, right?”
She nodded.
“I’ve never been there. Tell me about it.”
She spent the next thirty minutes giving him a sort of tourist’s overview of Kansas City, which managed to make her thoroughly homesick since she hadn’t been back in three years. Maybe she should call her mother.
“So you liked it there?” he asked after she’d more or less ground to a halt.
“Yeah. I did. I don’t think I want to live there anymore, but I liked being there when I was a kid. What about you?”
“What about me?” He looked slightly wary.
“You’re from San Antonio. All I really know about this town is the River Walk and the King William District. So tell me what I need to know.”
He gave her a lopsided smile. “You know more than that—you went around town searching for haunted houses, right?”
“Yeah, but I’m not sure I could find any of those neighborhoods again now. L
ooking for haunted houses kind of limits your point of view. You spend all your time looking for spooky stuff and ignoring the nice stuff. So what do your parents do?”
“My mom’s a guidance counselor at a middle school in the northwest part of town. My dad’s in civil service at Lackland Air Force Base. Right now they’re cruising to Alaska.” A shaft of late-afternoon sunlight caught his hair, sending glints of gold through the dark brown.
She blew out a breath. “Okay, I have to ask. Ramos is a Latino name, but neither you nor your sister look Latino.”
He gave her another half smile. “My mom’s maiden name was Riordan, if that helps. Dad’s family is Mexican-American. Mom’s strictly Irish. All three of us take after her for some reason.”
“Irish.” The corners of her mouth quirked up. “Something we have in common.”
“Yeah, I figured somebody named Emma Shea had to be a Celt.”
“On both sides, no less.” She took another sip of her wine. “My mom’s family were O’Connors.”
“Your family dynamics must have been easier.” He sighed. “My Irish-American mom had some run-ins with my Mexican-American grandmother and her sisters.”
“What about your Irish-American grandmother?”
“We didn’t have any contact with her. She and my mom had a big fight, supposedly over my dad. After that, they didn’t say much to each other. Although I guess she did come over to see each of us after we were born.”
“Do you remember her at all?”
He shook his head. “Not really. I remember an old lady talking to my mom one day, but I don’t remember much about her. And Mom doesn’t talk about her now.”
Emma tried to imagine what that would be like. Her own grandmothers had both inserted themselves very definitely into her family’s life, sometimes to the point where everybody wished they’d butt out. “That’s sad.”
“I guess. It was my grandma’s choice, though.” His face darkened slightly. “Or that’s what we always thought, anyway. Funny how that can change.”
“Why do you say that?”
“She willed Rosie that house. It was sort of out of the blue. I’m not even sure my mom realized her mother was sick. Then she died and left everything to Rosie.”
“It’s a beautiful house.”
He nodded. “It is. Although some of the beautiful part came from Rosie rather than Grandma Caroline. Anyway, I’m glad she did leave it to Rosie since it means I’ve got a place to sleep. Of course, it was my great-grandmother who actually built the place. You have any siblings?”
Okay, change of subject time. “A sister and a brother. Both still in KC. Well, Joanne’s in Shawnee Mission, but that’s in the neighborhood.”
“Are you close?”
She shrugged. “Sort of. They’re both older than me, which means they made my life hell when we were in school.”
“They picked on you?”
“They ran my life. Any guy who wanted to date me got the third degree. I didn’t have a boyfriend until they both graduated.”
He gave her a lazy grin. “We tried to do that to Rosie, Danny and me. She told us she’d tell our folks about the all the Playboys and Penthouses we had stashed under our beds. Of course now I’m pretty sure they already knew about them, but at the time that seemed like quite a threat.”
The dying sunlight caught the gold in his hair again, throwing the strong lines of his face in shadow. She remembered how he’d looked standing in the bedroom when she’d walked in that morning, sweat stained, his black T-shirt plastered to the muscles of his chest.
Very nice muscles, as she recalled. He was a man who even looked good in sweat stains. She licked her lips. “Nice night out here.”
He nodded. “Very. It’s cooling off.”
Maybe best not to stare into those dark eyes for too long. She turned slightly. “You can see down the river from here, almost all the way to King William.” Couples strolled along the path beside the river, some pushing strollers or towing dogs. Most hand in hand.
“You up for a walk?” he asked.
She took a breath. “Sure.”
He drove them back to his sister’s house first, leaving the truck parked in the driveway. Then he led her through the backyard down to a gate that opened onto the river. Cast-iron streetlights extended along the hiking path on both sides, glowing warm in the spreading twilight. She could see the dim shape of the old arsenal building across the water.
He reached back to take her hand, interlacing his fingers with hers as they moved slowly along the bank so that she felt the warmth of his palm against hers. Her heart seemed to skip a couple of beats. “Can you walk all the way downtown from here?” she asked a little huskily.
He shrugged. “Yeah, but it’s a hike. You can walk the whole length of the river if you feel like it. I had a friend who did that for a science project in college.”
Running steps sounded behind them, and he pulled her to the side to let a jogger pass, his hand warm upon her arm. Ahead of them a bridge loomed in the gathering darkness. The black metal arch spread against the night sky. “Johnson Street Footbridge,” he explained. “Replica of one that used to be downtown.”
“Replica?”
“The original was the Commerce Street Bridge. It showed up in some O. Henry stories when he lived here in San Antonio. They moved it from downtown to the district in the teens. Then some idiots dismantled it when they wanted to develop the river. This is a copy.” He moved her forward again into the darkness of the trees beside the bridge.
She stopped for a moment, resting her hand on the cool metal railing. All of a sudden they were alone except for the occasional jogger. Her pulse promptly kicked up a notch. Steady, Emma. She stared up into those dark eyes again. Fathomless dark, drawing her in. A girl could really get into trouble in a situation like this. Assuming she wanted to, of course.
Very safe assumption on her part.
“It’s nice here,” she mumbled. Great. Somehow whenever she wanted to be smooth she ended up sounding like a doofus. Yet another indication she was out of her league with Ray Ramos.
“Yeah.” His fingers brushed across her cheek, and he moved closer.
The hell with it. It might be a temporary thing, but right now temporary worked. She pushed up on her tiptoes, resting one hand against his shoulder. For a moment, his breath was on her cheek, warm against the cooling night air. And then she brought her lips to his.
All the comparisons that leapt to her mind were clichés. Electricity. Wild fires. Lightning bolts. And none of them really described the feeling that broadsided her, like her whole body was suddenly tingling with life. She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling herself closer.
He tasted of spice and smoke, smelled slightly of sweat and musk. He leaned back against the railing of the bridge, pulling her deeper into his arms, bending her body beneath his own so that her hips pressed against his, against the hard jut of his arousal.
His tongue moved across the seam of her mouth and she opened for him, letting her tongue slide along his. Another wave of heat washed over her. His hands slid over her back, untucking her shirt, fingers against bare skin. She pushed his T-shirt aside to feel him too, the faint crinkle of hair against her palms as she touched his stomach. In some distant part of her brain it occurred to her that a passing pedestrian would have quite a view, assuming the two of them weren’t totally protected by the shadows of the trees.
And she didn’t care. Whatever happened now. She didn’t give a damn.
***
Now, now, now. Ray’s brain seemed to have become a second pulse beat. Now against the bridge. Now on the grassy bank of the river. Now on the concrete bench he knew was down by the water. But now, right now, somewhere close. Because he couldn’t—could not—wait.
His hands slid to cup her breasts, warm in his hands like ripe fruit. He almost gr
oaned. Now, it had to be now.
Just when he’d lost his sanity he wasn’t entirely sure. It might have been during dinner, watching those gorgeous blue eyes, her skin like roses and cream. When she’d pushed a strand of red hair away from her shoulder, showing the deep V of her cleavage in the opening of that baggy shirt, he’d almost felt like vaulting over the table.
And now here he was close to assaulting her on the Johnson Street Footbridge. Great moment for the tourists.
He pulled back slowly, trying to get his unruly body under control again as his mind spun. “That was . . .” He paused, leaning his forehead against hers. What was it exactly? As good as I’d thought it would be? Better than I ever thought it would be? Okay, neither of those were likely to win the lady’s heart. Maybe he should cool it for a while.
“Insane,” she whispered.
Not exactly the word he’d planned on, but close enough. “Yeah. But hot insane.” Almost without meaning to, he pressed his lips to the side of her throat, running the tip of his tongue along the warm throbbing of her pulse. Oh yeah. Insane it is.
She whimpered, sliding her hands against his back. Her lips brushed against his collarbone. “We should probably stop,” she whispered.
“No we shouldn’t. We should probably move to a more private place and explore some possibilities.” His voice sounded a little rough. Maybe he should quit using it. He was more the action type of guy anyway. He took hold of her hand, pulling her away from the bridge.
“Where are we going?”
Where? Well, that was the question, of course. He slowed his steps as he explored his options. Grassy bank? Too early in the evening—if the families didn’t freak out, the local cops probably would. Same went for the concrete bench on the riverside, although it would be great around midnight. Against the bridge had already been vetoed.
He paused, closing his eyes. Rosie’s place? That involved walking by Rosie, who couldn’t be trusted not to comment. The Hampton house?
The very thought of having sex with Emma Shea at the Hampton house was almost enough to kill his arousal right there. No, most definitely not.