by Maddy Hunter
She folded her arms across her chest and gave me a dour look. “I would not blab everything.”
“You would so. You almost gave it away at dinner!”
“A slip of the tongue. I got lost in the moment. So what’s it going to be? Your room or your grandmother’s? Frankly, I think Mrs. S. and her roommate would love to have me. Tilly asked me all kinds of inquiring questions on the way to the rope bridge today. We had what you would call a wonderful bonding event. In all my years as a man, I never experienced anything like it. It’s so emotionally fulfilling.” She gave her nails a quick buff on the sleeve of her sweater, then regarded them admiringly. “I think Tilly is rather taken with me.” She looked up suddenly. “She’s not gay, is she?”
“No, she’s not gay. She’s an anthropologist.”
Jackie’s face froze. “An anthropologist? Oh, Jeez. She probably noticed how big my feet and hands are in comparison to the rest of me. And you know what that means? It means she was only being nice to me so she could study me like a bug under a microscope!” She sucked in her breath. “She wasn’t trying to bond with me at all! She was being dishonest, and…and conniving. I hate that about women! A guy would never sink that low. The only time a guy is going to bond with you is when he wants to get you into bed, and that’s not really dishonest. It’s just shallow.” She seized my arm. “Are you going to send me in there to be scrutinized by that woman? What if I can’t handle it? What if I crack under the pressure? You have to let me stay here, Emily. If you don’t, I refuse to be held responsible for what might happen.”
She was right, of course. Sending her off to spend the night with Nana and Tilly would be like sending her into a minefield. If I was serious about wanting to keep our former relationship under wraps, there was only one safe place for her to sleep.
Disappointment weighted my limbs. Despair flooded through me. Nuts! Sometimes I hated my life. “All right,” I said glumly, disbelieving that I was agreeing to this. “You can stay here. But only for one night! Tomorrow night you’re back with Tom.”
She wrapped her arms around me and lifted me off the floor, covering my face with a flurry of kisses. “Oh, thank you! We can pretend it’s a sleepover! This is going to be so much fun. I’ve never been involved in a sleepover before, except in college at the frat house, and that was more like a drunken orgy, so it probably doesn’t count.” She set me back on my feet and made a beeline for the bathroom. “I’ll just go slip into my pj’s. It’s always been a mystery to me what girls do at a pajama party, but I’m really excited to find out.” She paused at the bathroom door. “You won’t kick me out if I don’t have standard-issue pajamas, will you? See you in a sec.”
I stared at the door, numbed. How had this happened? My perfect evening. Gone. Kaput. I walked to the telephone in a daze, convinced that in her own inimitable way my mother had something to do with this. I punched up Etienne’s room.
“Hi,” I said when he answered. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but something’s come up.”
“Something has been up since the moment I kissed you,” he confessed in his beautiful French/German/Italian accent. “I’m anxious to ease the strain.”
Unh! Have I mentioned before that I hate my life? “What I’m trying to say is”—I choked out the words—“we have to postpone until tomorrow night.”
Silence, punctuated by intermittent bouts of heavy breathing.
“Etienne?”
“The missile is ready to fire.”
“Can you freeze the countdown?”
“It can be severely damaging to a missile when the launch sequence is interrupted.”
Especially when the missile was the size of Rhode Island. “I’m so sorry. I can’t tell you how sorry. But I have to spend the night with one of the female guests who’s having a problem with her husband. I tried to get out of it, but I can’t. I’m stuck.”
A pause. “Is there physical violence involved, Emily? Do you need my assistance?”
“No, no. It’s just a misunderstanding.”
Another pause. “What about my room? Can the woman stay here tonight?”
That’s just what I needed. An opportunity for Etienne and Jackie to meet each other. “Um…that won’t work. She’s pretty distraught. I’ll probably be up half the night listening to her vent.”
More silence, followed by, “I suppose that’s part of your job. One of the many hazards of being employed. I understand it, darling, but I don’t like it. Don’t let me keep you then. Have a good evening, and I’ll see you tomorrow.” CLICK.
I held the receiver at arm’s length and studied it for a long moment before hanging up and throwing myself onto the bed to replay the conversation in my head. The polite words. The supreme understanding. The solicitous tone. Boy, was he miffed! And here I thought the Swiss were too unemotional to display fits of temper. Hah! I guess it was best to find this out before the engagement…if there was an engagement…if Jack Potter hadn’t completely ruined my chances of marital bliss for the second time in as many centuries.
I stared mindlessly at the canopy above me, unable to think, unable to move, until I heard a tentative knock at the door. I was up like a shot. Maybe it was Etienne. Maybe he was here to apologize for losing his temper. I threw open the door.
“There was a note in my mailbox sayin’ y’all had my tour bag in here.”
Ashley. Nuts. I eyed the crutches under her arms and the plaster cast that constricted her right leg to mid-calf. “Wow. You really did a number on yourself. I guess the cast means you broke something.”
“My, my, aren’t you the clever one. I broke my medial malleolus.” She gave me a smug look. “You probably don’t know what that is.”
“A bone.” I lowered my gaze to her cast, catching a glimpse of the bare toes that were bundled inside the thick casing of white plaster. “In your foot.”
Her face fell. “How did you know that?”
Duh? “Lucky guess.”
She shifted her weight on her crutches, looking as if she wished she hadn’t stopped by.
“You probably want to get back to your room,” I encouraged. “I’ll get your bag.”
“I suppose the whole day fell apart after my untimely departure today,” she said as I charged across the room. “That was so unkind of me to land in the hospital and dump all my responsibilities in your lap. How did y’all ever manage?”
“We did okay. We toured the distillery, ate lunch, bought souvenirs, and arrived back here fifteen minutes ahead of schedule.”
Her eyes narrowed to slits. “Really?” She sounded disappointed. “You didn’t run into any problems?”
I retrieved her bag and headed back to the door. “None.”
“Well.” She smiled stiffly. “Isn’t that nice.”
“We’ve run into a few problems at the castle though. Wailing in the halls at night. Cold spots in the rooms. Bloody footprints on the floor. And lest I forget, two people have died!”
She looked taken aback. “Tour members?”
“Castle staff! A maid and a custodian. And they looked like they’d been frightened to death! This is all your fault!”
“My fault? Why is it my fault?”
“Because you booked us into this place knowing full well it’s haunted!”
“I thought you didn’t believe in ghosts.”
“I believe in them now!”
“The tour company made the decision to stay here, Emily. And they based their decision on economics, not on some old wives’ tale about the castle being haunted. Look at this place! It’s a five-star hotel. Where else can y’all find accommodations like this for the money we’re paying? In another hotel at our rate you’d be looking at single beds, bare walls, and a communal bathroom down the hall. You think the guests would settle for that?”
“I think they’d settle for staying in a place where people aren’t turning up dead every day!”
“Ready or not,” yelled Jackie over the roar of the whirlpool, “here I
come.”
I wheeled around toward the bathroom to see a leg kick out from behind the door in the style of a Vegas showgirl. In the next instant the door opened wide to reveal Jackie striking a sexy pose in sheer black babydolls with pink ribbon trim and a matching G-string panty. “Boop-oop-adoop!” She hoisted up her leg, flung out her arm, and snapped back her head. “Okay. What’s next?”
Oh, this was nice. Alone in the bathroom for five minutes and she turns into Betty Boop.
Ashley hobbled up beside me for a better look. She stared at Jackie. She stared at me. A knowing smile curled her lips. “Looks like y’all have plans for the evening. I better go. I wouldn’t want to keep you girls from anything.”
Jackie looked our way. “Oops! I didn’t realize we had company.”
“You don’t. I was just leaving.” Ashley nodded toward the tour bag in my hand. “Loop that around my neck, would you?”
“I can carry it down to your room for you.”
“No!”
Uh-oh. I was getting a bad feeling about this. “Jackie’s being here isn’t what you think,” I explained as I maneuvered the handles over her head. “We’re having a”—I forced the words out—“a pajama party.”
“Is that what y’all call it up North?”
“Too bad about your injury!” Jackie bellowed over the noise echoing behind her. She thrust her foot out and gave it a little wiggle. “That’s one of the advantages of having enormous feet. You don’t fall on your face and make a fool of yourself so often!”
Wow. I had to hand it to Jack. He was really getting the hang of this female thing.
Ashley fixed Jackie with a withering look. To me she said, “Does her husband know about y’all?” Then with her canvas tote hanging like a feed bag around her neck, she hobbled briskly out the door.
“Cretin,” Jackie mouthed after her. “And did you notice? She didn’t even thank me for hauling her butt all the way back from those stairs today. The ingrate.”
I closed the door to the hall, an uncomfortable feeling churning in my stomach. I’d explained well enough, hadn’t I? Ashley didn’t think Jackie and I were…that the two of us were about to—
“If the whirlpool’s available, do you mind if I hop in?” Jackie asked. “Seems a shame to let it all go to waste.”
I waved her on with a listless gesture. “Go ahead. Someone might as well enjoy it.”
“Oh, good. You want to join me?”
“NO!”
“What? Girls don’t do that at pajama parties?”
“No! They don’t. They…they have scavenger hunts. They make crank phone calls. They do inventive things with toothpaste and feathers.”
“Sounds boring.”
“They paint each others’ toenails.”
“Ooh. That’s a little better. Maybe we can do that when I come out.” She gave me a little finger wave and disappeared, thankfully, into the bathroom. I stumbled across the floor, collapsed into a chair, and practiced some mindless staring again.
Okay, I told myself, things weren’t that bad. My love life was on permanent hold and I had to spend the evening entertaining Gypsy Rose Lee, but at least I was coping. I mean, despite the stress, I didn’t have hives galloping all over my body.
I pondered that for a millisecond before racing to the dresser to check out my face. I squinted into the mirror. Uh-oh. Little red welts were creeping up my throat. And there was a huge one on my jaw. Okay. Things were really bad.
The lights suddenly dimmed, then flickered, then went out completely, pitching the room into total darkness.
And now they were worse.
Chapter 10
“If this is a pajama party prank, I don’t think it’s funny!” yelled Jackie from the bathroom. “Turn the light on! I can’t see a—”
CLINK! CRASH! Tinkle. PLOP! Glug glug.
“Jack? Are you all right?”
Silence.
Uh-oh. “Hang on! I’m coming!” I felt my way through the darkness like a blind person, arms waving like antennae, toes testing the floor before each step. I located the bathroom door and curled my hand around the knob, giving it a turn. It wouldn’t budge. I listened intently for a moment. The silence was eerie. I banged on the door. “Jack? Are you okay? Can you hear me?”
“Loud and clear, now that you’ve killed the whirlpool. Are you going to turn on the light or not?”
“I can’t. Must be a power outage. Everything is dark out here too. Why can’t I get the door open?”
“Because it’s locked.”
I rested my forehead against the door and waited a beat. “Here’s a thought. Why don’t you unlock the door and come out of there?”
“Because I’m in my bare feet, there’s glass all over the floor, and I can’t see my hand in front of me! You have any other bright suggestions?”
“Are you close to any towels?”
“Just a minute.” A pause. Shuffling. SPLAT!Plink. CRASH! “Damn. Okay. I found a couple of towels.”
“Keep them folded, set them on the floor, then step onto them and glide your way to the door. Pretend you’re ice-skating.” I hope she’d found bath towels. Given the size of her feet, hand towels would never cut it.
“You’re sure it’s all right to use these towels on the floor? If I dirty them, what’ll I use to dry off when I finally get to use the whirlpool?”
Back when she’d been a guy, she used to grab our white Royal Velvet towels with the ribbon-and-lace embroidery to dry off the car. Megadoses of estrogen and progesterone had worked wonders with her brain matter. “We can request more towels at the front desk. Just unlock the door and get out of there.”
“Okay.” After a half-minute’s wait that was accompanied by muffled epithets and sounds of broken glass scraping the floor tiles, I heard the lock click and the knob rattle. The door creaked open. “Emily?” she asked tentatively.
“Right here.” I inched my hand into the blackness, connected with her arm, and yanked her into the bedroom.
“Wow.” Her voice was a whisper. “It’s really dark in here. Isn’t this fun? How long do you think the power outage will last?”
“Don’t know. Let’s see if I can find out.” This was eerie. Even the outdoor floodlights were out. I inched my way to the sitting area, located my shoulder bag on the chair where I’d left it, and fingered every object inside until I found my flashlight. I turned on the beam, walked to the bedside phone, and hit the button on the phone pad for the front desk. It rang, and rang, and rang. “No one’s answering.”
“Listen. The music’s stopped. I bet they had to shut down the entertainment. Those cloggers could trample each other to death in the dark. That’s probably where the desk clerk is. In the dining room, directing traffic with a big flashlight.”
I hung up. “Maybe you’re right.” I flashed the light on her. “EH!” Not only was she right, she was buck naked. “Where are your clothes?”
“In the bathroom. What’s the problem? You used to see me naked all the time.”
“Your hardware was different back then. I’m not used to the new stuff yet.”
“You better cough up a robe for me then, because I’m not going back into that bathroom until the lights come back on.”
“You outweigh me by ninety pounds, Jack! I own nothing that’ll fit you.”
“I love that little teal wrap you’re wearing. That might fit. It’s loose enough.”
I sighed with defeat. What the heck. My evening was ruined anyway. I shrugged out of my wrap and set it on the bed for her. “Here it is. Knock yourself out.” I pulled a pair of Joe Boxer pajama bottoms and a cotton top out of the dresser drawer, and yanked them on. “How’s it fit?” I asked as I aimed the narrow beam back at her.
“You tell me.” She twirled in place like a music-box dancer. It was too short, too tight, and entirely the wrong color, but at least she wasn’t naked anymore.
“Perfect,” I said, cursing under my breath when my little Maglite suddenly dimmed. I slapped
it against my palm and rotated the head, narrowing and widening the beam.
“Looks like your batteries are getting low. Do you have matches here someplace?”
“By the ashtray on the desk.” I heard commotion in the hall as I panned the light left and right over the fireplace. Excited voices. High-pitched laughter.
“I told you they must have ended the entertainment,” said Jackie from the direction of the desk. “Party’s over. Everyone’s headed back to their rooms.”
My beam was holding steady, but as I focused on the gilt-framed painting of the aristocratic lord with his horse, hounds, and frolicking children, I slatted my eyes in astonishment, noticing something I hadn’t seen before. “Uff da,” I said in an undertone. I hurried closer for a better look and squinted up at the painting, but it was too high on the wall for a close-up inspection. “Jack, come over here. And bring a straightback chair. You need to drag this painting off the wall for me.”