The Haunting of Josie

by Kay Hooper

  Josie didn’t know why it looked so familiar, why she felt so drawn to it. Not enough of it was visible for her even to identify it, and it was only when she went over and pulled back a corner of the dustcover that she realized she was looking at a desk.

  A desk.

  In a flash of memory, she suddenly recalled the portrait of Luke. He’d been sitting at a desk, she remembered. A big, heavy desk made of gleaming dark wood. And some of his furniture was still in the house, so why not that?

  “Josie?” Marc, calling from downstairs.

  “Up here,” she called back, staring at the desk. There were things on top that had to be moved before she could uncover it completely, and she was wrestling with a rather large box—apparently filled with rocks, judging by the weight—when Marc reached the attic.

  “What’re you—”

  “Oh, damn, why do people pack everything heavy in a single box?” she asked breathlessly.

  Marc pushed her gently to one side and lifted the box without visible strain. “Where do you want this?”

  “Oh—anywhere. I just need it moved.” She was glad she’d stolen his shirt, because he looked awfully good bare-chested. She watched him set the box to one side on a trunk, then pointed mutely at the two remaining boxes on the desk. While he got those, she moved a dress form and an ancient sewing basket, which left the desk unburdened by anything except the dustcover.

  Marc came to her side, tipped her face up, and kissed her quite thoroughly and leisurely. Then he said, “May I ask why we’re moving things around the attic at eight-thirty on a Wednesday morning?”

  Josie couldn’t help grinning a little at the infinite patience in his voice. “Well…I wanted to take a look at this desk.”

  “Why?” He was still patient.

  She found that her hands were on his chest, that she was absently smoothing what was almost a pelt of black hair. “Nice,” she said, without realizing she was going to.

  Obviously realizing to what she referred, Marc said politely, “I’m glad you think so.” He was smiling just a little, a very masculine smile.

  Josie felt her cheeks burning, but said seriously, “You said some very nice things about me last night, and…”

  “And now it’s your turn?”

  Realizing she was rapidly painting herself into a corner, she said, “Um…the desk—”

  His hands slid down her back and curved over her bottom, easing her against him. “Never mind the desk. I woke up to an empty bed. It was a terrible and most unwelcome shock. My ego needs stroking.”

  She eyed him uncertainly. “I got the impression you had plenty of confidence.”

  “In most things,” he agreed. “But I seem to be a mass of insecurity when it comes to you, sweetheart.”

  Josie was surprised. Somewhat rueful, she said, “One week after meeting, we’re in bed together—and you’re insecure? I can’t imagine why.”

  “Humor me.”

  “Um…if you keep doing that with your hands, I’m not going to be able to say very much about anything….”

  Smiling, he continued to move his hands over her bottom. Almost casual but unmistakably intimate. The touch of a lover. “You look sexy as hell in my shirt,” he told her.

  Josie blinked. Already, the ability to utter anything coherent was slipping away from her. The effect this man had on her was terrifying. “I…um…was going to apologize. For stealing it.”

  “Don’t. You can have every shirt I own, if you promise to wear them every morning. With nothing underneath.”

  Dazed, she felt a liquid warmth spread under his caressing hands and then slowly, gently, flow throughout her body. Her skin heated and her breathing quickened. And it wasn’t gentle anymore. Her breasts felt full and hot, and between her legs was a feverish ache that made her instinctively press herself closer to him. Her head fell back, because he was exploring her throat with ardent lips, the scratching of his morning beard sensuous, and she heard a little whimper escape her.

  As suddenly as that, as completely as that, she was lost, given over to him utterly.

  Marc raised his head and drew a harsh breath. His hands grasped her waist, and he lifted her onto the edge of the desk behind her. Josie was hardly aware of what she was doing as she put her hands behind her to brace herself. He was between her knees, still kissing her throat as he unbuttoned the shirt she wore far enough to expose her breasts.

  She felt her back arch when he touched her, and unconsciously gripped the dustcover beneath her as her fingers curled in sharp reaction. He was kneading and stroking her naked flesh, his mouth hot and hungry on her nipple, and she heard her own uneven breathing matching his, felt her heart pounding so hard she thought it would burst.

  And it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except having him right here and now.

  His fingers slid up her inner thigh and found her damp and ready for him. He groaned, and Josie answered him with a soft, uncontrolled sound of her own when he rhythmically stroked the most exquisitely sensitive nerves her body possessed.

  She endured the spiraling tension, her head still thrown back and eyes closed, and moaned in relief when she heard the faint rustle of his clothing and felt his hard hips push her thighs wider apart. He entered her with a strong thrust of urgent need and Josie cried out in wordless pleasure, her legs closing around him and holding on tight, her back arching again.

  The ascent had been so swift that the culmination could hardly be anything else. They were both caught in a current so strong that even if they had wanted to slow down, it would have been impossible. Together, perfectly in sync, they rushed to the peak, and over, and were left holding on to each other in the dazed aftermath like survivors of a storm.

  Her arms around his neck and her face pressed against his throat, Josie gradually came back to herself. Her entire body was throbbing, echoing satisfaction, and for a long time she just luxuriated in it.

  When she finally did draw back just a little and look up at him, Marc kissed her. “My God,” he murmured.

  Wondering if she looked as awed as he sounded, Josie shook her head. “What happened? Do you realize we’re in the attic?”

  He chuckled. “So we are. That’ll teach you to wander off.”

  Briefly, she wondered why she had—but then remembered. “I had a reason,” she told him.

  “I know. You wanted to look at a desk.”

  Which she was sitting on. Momentarily distracted when he eased back away from her and reclaimed his pants, Josie paused a moment before saying, “Well, not exactly.”

  “Then what, exactly?”

  Her shirt—his shirt—was gaping open. She closed and buttoned it, then got herself off the desk. With more than a little help from Marc; her legs were still shaking.

  “I was lured up here,” she told him, keeping her voice very matter-of-fact. “Help me get this dustcover off the desk, will you, please?”

  “Lured?”

  “The dustcover, Marc.” She felt oddly reluctant to explain this to him. Maybe because they’d just made love rather spectacularly, or maybe only because she was afraid he wouldn’t believe her.

  But before he could ask the question again, Josie tossed back a corner of the dustcover to expose part of the desktop, and both of them saw the key. It lay there innocently, a small brass key with a faded loop of ribbon.

  “That looks like the key you showed me,” Marc said, a little surprised but not particularly disturbed. Because he didn’t know, of course. He had no idea.

  She picked it up slowly. Stared at it. The faded ribbon still bore faint water spots from where it had gotten wet in the shower. And here it was—underneath a dustcover that had been piled with heavy objects. Here it was, when it should have been in her jewelry box, in her dresser drawer, downstairs in her bedroom.

  “Josie?”

  “This was Luke’s desk,” she heard herself say in a shockingly normal voice. “The one in the painting. The one in his study when he died.”

  She took
a step back and looked at the desk. The center drawer, she saw, bore a small keyhole. When she tried the drawer, it was locked. Of course. And the key fit.

  Of course.

  Half-afraid there would be nothing, Josie slowly slid the drawer open. Inside was a leather-bound book atop a carbon copy of what looked like a manuscript, both lying beside a stack of letters tied with a faded ribbon.

  Marc picked up the book and opened it. He looked at Josie quickly. “It’s Luke’s journal. The one the police never found when they were investigating his death.”

  Josie picked up the bundle of letters. There were many, all on blue stationery, the envelopes addressed simply, in a delicate, spidery hand, to Luke. They had never been mailed.

  She held the bundle to her nose and, so faint it was three quarters imagination, smelled a woman’s perfume. And that was when something clicked in her mind.

  “Of course. An old woman.”

  EIGHT

  IT TOOK A while to explain, but Marc managed to get out of Josie the missing details and her thoughts regarding them. He knew she was reluctant because she was afraid he wouldn’t believe her, and also because she was shaken herself by the nudging and leading that had caused her to end up unlocking the drawer of Luke’s desk.

  He didn’t blame her for either reaction. And he believed it all. He believed it because he knew Josie well enough to be certain she was neither a liar nor delusional, but even more, he believed it because he loved her. Hell, if she’d told him black was white or up was down, he would believe her; he was that far gone.

  In any case, he got the rest of the story out of her. The energetic activity of the key during the past days was explained while they showered, and she filled in the details of her trip up to the attic and the conclusions she’d reached, while he shaved and she dried her hair. By the time they had coffee and breakfast, and Marc had returned from a brief trip to the cottage to change into casual clothes, they were ready to settle down in the den and figure out the rest.

  “If we can,” Josie said, eyeing the manuscript, stack of letters, and journal now reposing on the coffee table. She had cleared away the remains of last night’s meal while Marc had gone to change. “But it’s been fifty years, and we don’t even know what we’re looking for, really.”

  Marc nodded. “So what if Luke was having an affair with someone named Joanna? He certainly never claimed to be a saint. And why he’d wait fifty years and then urge you to uncover his secret affair…”

  “I know, it doesn’t make sense. There has to be more to it. And…if that lady I saw out the window was Joanna, then all this must have something to do with her.”

  “It’s a point to start from anyway. You know, just reading all this could take us days, maybe longer. What about your writing?” Marc asked, watching her much more closely than he showed—he hoped.

  “Temporarily postponed,” she answered, a bit too offhandedly to fool him.

  He had a hunch about the “writing” Josie had come out here to do, and if he was right, then it was certainly understandable that she would grasp at any excuse to postpone her “work.” Digging up the past, especially a tragic and traumatic past, was grim work even when one was detached—in this case something he doubted she could ever be.

  “So you’re…consumed…by something else now?” he heard himself ask lightly.

  Josie looked at him, a bit startled at first. “Consumed? Oh…I did say…”

  “That your writing consumed you, yes. Only now it seems to be these demanding Westbrooks who’re…taking up all the room.” He was still able to see her emotions, and so he knew that his comments disturbed her. And he wasn’t much surprised when she chose to focus on the long-dead Westbrook rather than the flesh-and-blood man who had shared her bed last night.

  Hurt, but not much surprised.

  “Luke’s mystery is surely a transitory thing,” she said casually. “An interesting puzzle to try and work out. Once we find the solution, I doubt it’ll…take up any room at all. Besides, I’m the one he’s been haunting, and I feel honor-bound to try and help him.”

  “Admit it,” he invited ruefully. “It’s just as much Luke as it is the mystery that attracts you.”

  “Why do you say that?” she asked slowly.

  “The way you say his name.”

  Josie frowned slightly. “How do I say his name?”

  Marc wished he hadn’t brought this up, but now that he had, he knew he had to finish it. “As if he’s…someone you care about. Someone who matters to you.”

  She shook her head, then said, “I want to know why he can’t rest in peace, that’s all.” She regarded him a bit uncertainly, then added, as if she couldn’t let the subject drop so easily, “He does look a bit like you.”

  “Or…I look a bit like him?”

  That brought another frown. “Marc, are you accusing me of having the hots for a ghost?”

  He couldn’t help but smile. “Not at all. If you tell me that I’m the one who turns you on, I’ll believe it.”

  Josie sat down on the couch and murmured, “If you have to be told, after last night—and this morning—then one of us wasn’t paying attention.”

  He had to laugh at that, and reminded himself that he had already more or less reached the same conclusion. He’d felt a stab of jealousy this morning when, after lovemaking so intense he had been totally staggered, she had seemingly been able to turn her attention so quickly to Luke’s desk. But Marc had done some hard thinking, and the answers he’d come up with satisfied him.

  A dead man was no threat to a living one, not when it came to love. Yes, Josie was interested in Luke—because he was a ghost, and because he apparently wanted her to solve some problem that had lingered fifty years after his death. That kind of puzzle would fascinate anyone.

  But she was also, he had realized, using the mystery—perhaps not consciously—to occupy her mind. She had taken Marc into her bed, accepted him as her lover, and she seemed entirely comfortable with that fact—and with him. But it was obvious she wasn’t yet ready to look beyond the pleasure they found together and admit there was more than passion between them.

  If he hadn’t known enough of her past to believe he understood what motivated her, the pain and wariness that urged her to try to protect herself, Marc would probably have driven himself crazy and her away from him by demanding the commitment he needed from her. But he was able—just able—to accept what she offered and wait patiently until she was ready for more.

  At least for the moment.

  And if, in the meantime, she wanted to concentrate on this apparent mystery, that was fine with him. He was with her, which was definitely what he wanted, and besides, it would—well, maybe—serve to occupy his own mind with something other than constant thoughts of her. And, truthfully, since it was his ancestor, he was more than a little curious himself.

  So he had no business making jealous noises.

  “I was paying attention,” he told her solemnly, following her lead in lightening the discussion. “But I’ve told you how insecure I am about you. Hell, if I can feel threatened by a ghost, I’m really in trouble.”

  She let out a little laugh and looked at him with bright eyes. “I’ll say. But if it’ll soothe your ruffled feathers to hear it, you’re the one I find sexy.”

  “I’m so glad.” He grinned at her.

  “Good. Now, do you think we might get started on all this reading?”

  “I’ll read the manuscript,” he offered, sitting down on the couch beside her, “if you want to tackle the letters and his journal.”

  Josie had already united the bundle of letters and held them in her hands, but she said, “I feel a little weird about this. I mean, if Joanna is the lady I saw this morning, still very much alive…isn’t this invasion of privacy?”

  “Arguable,” Marc decided after a moment’s thought. “Having been sent to him, found in his desk, presumably in his possession when he died, the letters belonged to Luke. And since this ho
use and its contents now belong to me—the letters are lawfully mine.”

  She looked at him with a slight smile. “Okay, that’s the legal answer. What’s the moral one?”

  “I was afraid you were going to ask that.” Marc sighed. “Look, whether or not the lady you saw wrote these letters, we still have to read them. What choice do we have? We have to gather all the information we can before we can decide what to do. Right?”

  “I suppose. But I feel like a voyeur.”

  Marc leaned over and kissed her, mostly because it had become a necessity to him. “Think of it this way. If there is a problem Luke wants solved, and if it does involve this lady you saw, then you just might be doing her a big favor by reading her letters.”

  Since she knew he was right, Josie sighed and began opening the letters to arrange them by date—oldest first. “What I can’t figure out is why the police never found this stuff. I can’t believe they wouldn’t have searched his desk.”

  “They did search it.” Marc had picked up the biography of Luke that they’d both read, and answered absently while apparently looking for a particular section. “I remember that mentioned in the police report. There were a few ordinary things in the desk drawers—none of them locked, by the way—but no manuscript or journal, and certainly no love letters.”

  “Then where were they? And how did they wind up locked in the desk fifty years later?”

  “One of the things we need to figure out, I’d say.”

  Josie watched him. “What are you looking for?”

  “There’s a list of his published works…. Ah, here it is. I want to see if this manuscript ever became a book.”

  She waited while he scanned the list, then said, “Well?”

  “Nope. Or, at least, not under this title. I suppose he might have changed it, but…” He put the bio on the coffee table and got the manuscript. It was tied up with frayed twine, and though the carbon type had faded, they could both read the title page.