One-Click Buy: September Harlequin Blaze

by Jo Leigh

  Then again, one man’s junk was another man’s treasure. And his treasure, the answer to bringing Celeste back, was somewhere in this attic. He decided the best plan of action was to actually have a plan. There were way more boxes than pieces of furniture, so he decided to tackle the job according to ratio. He guessed three boxes for every one piece of furniture, so since he was already two boxes down, he grabbed another, and prepared for a long night.

  After thirty minutes, he’d been through nine boxes mostly filled with ancient knickknacks and three pieces of empty furniture. So far, he’d discovered nothing that looked remotely useful. In fact, he hadn’t found the first thing that even suggested his ancestors had ghosts visiting the plantation at all, which wasn’t that odd, since the family did its best to protect their secret. But his grandmother had indicated that what he needed was here, and since what he needed would certainly have something to do with ghosts, he knew he simply hadn’t found it yet. Whatever it was.

  Closing up a box filled with antique dolls, he scanned the remaining pieces of furniture to decide which one to tackle next. One plastic-covered piece was taller than the rest, and seemed to sit away from the others. Maybe that was why it seemed to capture Dax’s attention.

  In any case, he stood slowly, his back slightly stiff from sitting on the floor, and then crossed the room. His skin bristled as he neared the tall piece. This was it; whether Adeline Vicknair was somehow leading him in this direction, or he simply sensed that he’d found what he was looking for, Dax had no doubt. Whatever was hidden under the heavy gray plastic was going to help him bring Celeste back.

  Grabbing one side of the tarp, he pulled it to the floor and viewed an antique oak chifforobe. A tall door formed the right side of the well-sculpted piece, and five drawers formed the left. He opened the top drawer and found it packed with papers and cards. He held the top one up to the light and saw a greeting card, so faded and yellowed from the test of time that the image on the front wasn’t discernible, but when Dax opened it, the writing inside was intact.

  Humbly and forever yours, John-Paul.

  “John-Paul,” Dax repeated. John-Paul Vicknair. He could see the name, not only on the card in front of him, but also on a paper he’d recently viewed. One of the Vicknair ancestry logs at the parish courthouse, he believed. Nanette had copied the handwritten parish records from the Civil War years in the hopes of finding someone living in the house at the time, and naturally she’d asked Dax to help her. John-Paul Vicknair had been one of the names from back then, from 1861 to 1865, which meant that the card Dax was holding was well over a hundred years old. He lifted several more cards and letters from the drawer, and found that all of them were either to or from John-Paul Vicknair, and that the other correspondent was his wife, Clara.

  “Mon dieu, you scared me to death!” Nanette exclaimed, entering the attic.

  He squinted at her in the dimness of the room. She squinted back, her eyes puffy and her black hair tousled from sleep. “I’m looking for something,” he said.

  “Looking for what?” The warped planks of the wooden floor creaked loudly as she crossed the room to peer over his shoulder. “And this better be good. I thought a monster-size rat was roaming around up here, right above my bedroom. And do you know it’s three in the morning? I have a herd of ninth-graders that would love to take advantage of a tired Ms. Vicknair tomorrow morning, and I don’t like giving them the one-up on anything.”

  Opening the second drawer, Dax found more letters and cards. The third drawer yielded the same thing, as did the fourth and fifth. All were from John-Paul Vicknair to Clara, or vice versa, and all of them were apparently written during the mid-to-late 1800s, including those Civil War years that he and Nanette had been searching.

  “I got a note from Grandma Adeline tonight,” he said, still scanning the cards and letters as best he could in the limited light.

  “A note? You mean another assignment?”

  “No, a note, telling me that the information that you need is in the attic.”

  “The information I need?” she questioned.

  “These cards and letters,” Dax said, waving at the mound of them crammed in the drawers. “Some of them are from the Civil War. I know that may not prove anything, but you never know.” He frowned. Maybe he’d been drawn to the chifforobe because it held what Nanette needed. Maybe what he was supposed to find was somewhere different entirely.

  He turned and scanned the room again, while Nanette eagerly started thumbing through the letters.

  “You think what we need for the National Register is in here? Proof that the house was inhabited during the Civil War? Seriously?” she asked, suddenly much more alert.

  “I think that’s what she was talking about, as far as you’re concerned.”

  “What do you mean, as far as I’m concerned?” Nan asked, holding up a letter to the light.

  “She said that the information I want is up here too.”

  “You mean about Celeste?” Nanette asked, surveying the letter in her hand.

  Dax nodded, but she was too preoccupied with trying to read the letter to notice.

  “I can’t see anything up here,” she complained.

  “Yeah, I know.” He spotted a couple of empty boxes and pointed to them. “Grab those, and we’ll gather the letters and take them downstairs where the light is better.”

  He began scooping up the letters from the top drawer, waited for her to open the first box, then gingerly placed them inside. The paper was old, and in some cases already torn from age, or from their Vicknair ancestors rereading each other’s correspondence. He moved to the other drawers and did the same, until both boxes were full. Then he rubbed his fingertips along the bottom of each drawer to verify he hadn’t missed any letters. No way did he want to miss one that might help Celeste get back.

  Looking at the boxes, both filled to the brim, he realized that while he may have found what they were looking for, identifying it was going to take time. And time was something he didn’t have to spare.

  “Want to take them to the kitchen?” Nan asked. “So we can spread them out on the table?”

  “Sure. You’re actually going to stay up with me?” he asked, knowing that she never voluntarily gave up sleep before a workday. She’d been telling the truth earlier; ninth-graders would make mincemeat of a tired teacher.

  “I may read a few of them with you. Gotta admit, I’m curious to know what’s in these letters.” She grabbed one of the boxes as Dax lifted the other. “So you think there’s something in here that will help you figure out how Celeste can stay longer?”

  “I know that there’s something in this attic that will help, and I’m thinking it may also be in these letters.”

  “Did you learn anything from Ryan?”

  “Yeah,” he said, motioning for her to start on ahead of him. “I learned that Celeste’s situation is nothing at all like his was. He controlled when he came, where he went, how long he stayed, everything. She has no control, none at all. And there are other things that are different about her too, not just different from Ryan’s situation, but different from every ghost I’ve seen.”

  He followed her out of the attic and used their time navigating the ladder and then the two flights of stairs leading to the kitchen to once more run over all of the differences he’d noticed-Celeste’s exhaustion, her lack of control over when she came and went, the fact that she didn’t glow as brightly as other spirits and her eyes weren’t black.

  Dax decided not to enlighten Nan that Celeste also had the ability to touch him, and to do way more than that. She’d brought him to orgasm with her mouth, in her mouth. He hardened again, merely at the memory.

  He placed his box on the table and immediately sat down behind it, so there was no way Nan could notice the bulge pressing against his jeans. She had no need to know those details, and Dax certainly had no desire to share them with his cousin.

/>   He cleared his throat. “Ryan suspects that she glows brighter when she gets closer to the other side.”

  She placed her box across from his. “But every time our ghosts visit, they’re already glowing, and the brightness doesn’t increase as they get closer to crossing, or it hasn’t with any of mine. What about yours?”

  “No, never.”

  “And their eyes are always jet black, right from the moment I get them,” she said.

  “Mine too. That’s what I don’t understand about Celeste. Something’s different, and unless I figure it out in time, I’m afraid she’ll cross completely, and I won’t be able to stop it.”

  “And you think these letters hold the answer for what’s going on with her?” she asked, lifting a handful from her box.

  “Hell, I hope so.” He gave her a tired smile. “So, you up to reading, oh, a couple of hundred letters?”

  She sighed, then put the letters back on top of the stack. “You know, I thought that I’d help you get started on them,” she said, peeking at the clock on the microwave. “But I’ve got to get up in two hours. As much as I want to find proof that people were in this house back then, I do have a class to teach in the morning. And you have to work too, don’t you?”

  He did. In fact, tomorrow he had to cover his biggest route, visiting doctors in the majority of southeastern Louisiana. Typically, he loved his job. He made decent money, though currently most of it went toward repairs on the plantation, and he got a company-paid car-a BMW, no less-but it did involve a lot of driving and long hours, and generally required he get a full night’s sleep before a day of work. “Yeah, I do. But I think I’ll go ahead and start on some of these first, then I’ll sleep. Unlike your teaching job, I don’t really have a time I have to get started.”

  However, the later he started, the later he’d have to work, and in the back of his mind, he was hoping to see Celeste tomorrow night. Then again, his grandmother’s note had said she’d need more than a day of rest before she could return again. Maybe he should work an extra-long day, in case she showed up later in the week, and he decided to take a day off.

  Nanette yawned. “Tell you what. You look some of them over tonight and then mark the spot you get to. I’ll pick up tomorrow afternoon. With the parent-teacher conferences out of the way, I should be home right after school’s out, so that should give me plenty of time to see what we’ve got.”

  “Deal. And I can’t help but think that what we need is in here,” he said, indicating the boxes filled with letters.

  “I hope so, because it’d be really good to put Charles Roussel in his place. I’ve been dreaming of the day when I can tell him that he has no control over whether the Vicknair plantation stays or goes.” She smiled, apparently envisioning the scene with the cocky parish president. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe Grandma Adeline has given us a way to save the house.”

  “Maybe she has.” And maybe, just maybe, she’d given him a way to get back the woman he loved. One thing was for sure: if he got her back, he wasn’t going to waste a minute. He prayed their next time together wouldn’t be their last, but if it was, then he wanted to make sure he gave her every pleasure a woman could get from a man, and that each and every pleasure was as potent, as overwhelming, as what she’d so selflessly given him tonight-powerful enough for her to remember for eternity.

  8

  TWO HOURS LATER, Dax was on his second pot of coffee and still poring over the box of letters when Nanette entered the kitchen.

  “You didn’t sleep,” she said, stating the obvious as she filled a mug with coffee, then walked over and topped off his cup.

  “Nope.” Dax peered into the remaining box of letters on the floor beside him; he’d been reading them as quickly as he could and still was only halfway done. It’d taken time to view them, because in most cases they’d been in their original envelopes, and both the envelope and the papers within were weathered and fragile. On top of that, the writing was fairly faint, though it could have just seemed that way because Dax’s eyes were so tired.

  Nanette sat across from him and surveyed the two piles of paper taking over the majority of the kitchen table. “Okay. Tell me what you found.”

  “These aren’t dated and don’t have any references to historical events that would date them, per se.” He pointed to the larger stack on his right. Then he indicated the eight letters and envelopes on his left, the ones that she’d be most interested in. “But these-these are a different story entirely. It seems our great-great-great-great-grandfather-and I’m assuming I’ve got the number of greats right-not only fought in the Civil War, but also took the time to write his wife and tell her about it.”

  Nanette’s green eyes practically gleamed. “And his wife was…”

  “Right here,” Dax said, glad that he was able to give her what she wanted, even if he hadn’t found anything to help him with Celeste. “She stayed at home, at the plantation.”

  “No way! We can prove it? With those?” She reached for the small stack and pulled them toward her, protectively. “Dax, that’s incredible!”

  “Yeah, and I’m betting there are more in here that I haven’t even gotten to yet, but these eight are all dated between April and May 1862, during the battles at Fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip, where the North was trying to get control of New Orleans and that portion of the Mississippi River. Pretty interesting stuff, really.”

  Dax had also found it interesting that John-Paul Vicknair had managed to write his wife daily throughout the ongoing battle, a sign, in Dax’s mind, that all Vicknair men were singularly focused when it came to the women they loved. He’d bet John-Paul had been as determined to write that letter every day as Dax was determined to have Celeste with him, every day.

  Nanette read the first letter, nodding as she scanned the page, then flipped it over. Then she read the second, and the third, and so on, while Dax worked on finishing yet another cup of coffee. It’d been a long night, and he did have to go to work soon. He knew that he’d never finish all those letters before he had to go. But he’d made a good dent, and he’d found what Nanette was looking for, so the effort hadn’t been totally wasted, even if he’d yet to find anything that hinted as to why Celeste couldn’t get back to him.

  “So she stayed here while everyone else was fighting. He talks about his younger brothers, and his father, all joining in the Confederate efforts,” Nan said. “And he thanks her for staying here, and for helping the spirits to cross.”

  “I know. That’s exactly what we need, isn’t it?” Dax asked. “Now you can attach those letters to the nomination form and send it on in.”

  Nanette nodded, but she was frowning, Dax noticed, and when she looked up, her green eyes were glistening, on the verge of tears.

  “What is it?”

  “We can’t use these,” she said solemnly. “I know you’ve worked hard to find them, and I’m really feeling terrible about going back to bed knowing that you stayed up all night going through them. But we can’t use them.” She leaned over the table to look in the box. “But there are more here, right? I’ll keep going through them this afternoon. Maybe there’s something in there that we can use.”

  Dax was dumbfounded. He had dates, battles, the name of their ancestor who was fighting and the name of his wife at home. What more did she need? “Why can’t we use them?”

  “Because he talks about the ghosts in every one of them,” she said. “If we send these as verification of-” she looked at the name on the letter “-Clara Vicknair living here during the Civil War, the committee will read the contents, and they’ll learn that she was helping ghosts cross over. Whether they believe it or not, the next thing you know, everybody and their grandmother will be traipsing out here to see the haunted Vicknair place.” She shook her head. “We can’t do it, not with these. But maybe there’s something in there that doesn’t talk about the ghosts? Something that can be dated to the Civil War too?
”

  Dax could feel his frustration peaking. “Ever thought that maybe Grandma Adeline intended for us to use these? I mean, she’s the one who said what you were looking for was in the attic. Maybe it’s time to bring our ghosts out of the closet, so to speak. Would it be so bad if people knew? Especially if it helped us get on that register? That is the goal, right? And obviously, Grandma Adeline thought she was sending us in the right direction to achieve that goal.”

  “I can’t believe that. She protected the family secret, like everyone before her. If what we need is really in these letters, then we haven’t found it yet.”

  “Fine,” Dax said, standing and taking his cup to the sink. “But I can’t read any more letters now. I’ve got to get ready for work, and then I’ve got a full day visiting doctors.”

  Her chair squeaked as she twisted to look at him. “Did you find anything to help you with your problem? Anything about what’s happening with Celeste?”

  “Not yet.” He stared out the kitchen window at the cane fields and wished Celeste was here to see the beauty of the sugarcane. Next week, the cutting would begin as they went through grinding season. Then the massive eight-foot stalks would be chopped to the ground, and the stubs burned to prepare the field for replanting. It was an incredible, exhilarating process, and he wanted to share that with Celeste. He wanted to share lots of things with Celeste…if he could get her back. Unfortunately, not one line in any of the letters he’d read throughout the night gave him any indication how to make that happen.

  “Well, we haven’t finished all of the letters yet,” Nanette said, evidently deciding on optimism as her method of handling their new dilemma. “I’ll start on them after school, and I’ll follow your lead here and make a pile of the ones that may help us for you to go through. Jenee will be here this afternoon too, so she can help.”