“This is incredible,” she said, truly in awe. “It will make a great scene in the haunted house, that is, if you want to open it to the public.”
“We can do that. I’m thinking we’d lead tours through and scare the crap out of people at each stop.”
“If the house does what it just did every time you open a door, that won’t be a problem,” Sloane joked.
“Wait till you see this,” I said, stopping in front of the sliding panel. I pressed it and pushed it to the side. Landon had oiled the wheels, so it moved with barely a whisper.
“Whoa!” Sloane stepped forward. “What is it?”
I gestured to the door-within-a-door that wouldn’t open. “It’s locked. We don’t know.”
“Locked?” she asked in fascination. “How are you going to get in there? Because you have to get in there.”
“Maybe we can let the skeletons out of the closet for the haunted house.”
“Spooky.” She tried the doorknob. “Sorry. Couldn’t resist.”
“Landon’s getting some skeleton keys. Apparently a lot of locks in these old houses can be opened by the same types of keys.”
“Landon, huh? He’s a cutie.”
“He’s a pain in the ass.” With a great ass. I sighed. “Yeah, he’s a cutie.”
“I could think of worse guys to get sweaty with.”
“I’m not getting sweaty with anyone anytime soon,” I said, just as I heard a throat clear behind me.
Landon and Alex were standing in the doorway of the library, both of them grinning.
“I beg to differ,” Landon said. “You’ve been getting sweaty with me all afternoon.”
Damn it. Sloane came to my rescue as my face got even hotter.
“You know,” she said, “if you put out the call, you could get some really creative help on the haunting of your haunted house.”
I reset my brain back to the topic at hand and realized what Sloane, a potter who worked at the Bohemia School of Art and Design, was suggesting. Some of the pressure in my head eased a little. “Do you think they would help?”
She smiled. “What artist could resist decorating a haunted house?”
Chapter 9
I got in to work Monday morning and immediately went to the corner office and knocked.
“Come in!”
I opened the door to a big space filled with light from the third-floor windows that overlooked the river. Really, this place wasn’t so bad. The people were cool. The view was ace. Making video dating profiles — it could be worse, right?
“Kayla,” Rick said. “You must be psychic or something. I wanted to talk to you. Close the door. Have a seat.”
He wanted to talk to me? I wanted to talk to him about taking what little vacation I’d accrued so I could work on the house.
Rick cast his bright blue gaze around the office for a minute as if noticing his decor for the first time — a couple of surfboards hanging on the wall, a signed poster of Ron Raker surfing a big wave, a Derek Gores collage of a beautiful woman. Then he looked back at me, and I saw something in those eyes I didn’t like.
“Kayla, you’ve done awesome work for us here, and we want you to keep doing that work. But I’m afraid we’re going to have to end your employment.”
“What?” I blinked a few times, not quite getting what he said.
“What I mean to say is, if you’re willing to work for us on a freelance basis, that’s how we’d like to do it from here on out. We’re sorting through the in-studio demos. In a month or so, we’ll want to start the field shoots to show investors, and we’ll call you then.”
“You’ll what?”
Rick stood, holding out a hand, and I stood in response, a hundred percent stunned, operating totally on automatic, lifting my hand so he could grasp it and shake it with overzealous energy.
“That’s my girl. We’ll call you soon. Go ahead and take your stuff, though, OK? We need the desk.” He walked around me and opened his office door, shouting over the room full of my co-workers. Former co-workers. “Maria! Help Kayla, would you?”
Then he gently pushed me out, smiling all the while as he closed the door behind me.
What the actual fuck?
“Kayla? You OK?” Maria had come over to me. The rest of the coders and content creators had gone back to their earphones and keyboards. “You look kind of pale.”
“He fired me. I think.”
Maria looked around, then guided me back to my desk. “He told me you’d still be doing freelance for us.”
I looked around at the oblivious dronebots. They were badly in need of a Nerf war. “Does everyone know?”
“No,” she said. “They’ll figure it out soon enough. I’m sorry. Are you going to be OK?”
“I guess I’ll have to be.” And now it was more important than ever that I make the house project work. Or that I get that job with the tourism office, if they hadn’t given it away already.
By the time I’d packed my meager belongings in a box and headed to the door, a few of my colleagues were looking up from their monitors wearing curious expressions. Tough. Maybe they’d see me again if I did some freelance for the company, but right now, it was pretty hard to imagine doing Rick’s little projects.
Except that I needed the money. I always needed the money.
Well, I got my time off. And I would be spending all of it at Milkweed Manor. Too bad Landon was working his day job right now.
Funny that he was the first person I thought of after my day imploded.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
Landon wasn’t at his day job. Landon, who now had his own key to the house, was screwing in a new step on the staircase in the grand foyer of Milkweed Manor, his battery-powered drill zip zzziiippping in his capable hands as his muscles flexed and those dark eyes squinted behind his safety glasses.
Screwing. Ha ha.
Shut up, id.
I pulled at the neck of my T-shirt — I’d run home and changed into grubby clothes after my humiliation at the office — and blew cooling air into the suddenly warm vicinity of my boobs.
He put down the power tool, pushed up the safety glasses and glanced down the stairs at me. “What did you say?”
“What are you doing here?”
He gave me a brief Fireworks smile as he got up and dusted off the knees of his well-worn jeans. He came down the steps and grabbed his water bottle, taking a big sip. It was as hot as a volcanic vent in here, even with the front door open. Sweat peppered his army-green T-shirt, which advertised Bohemia Brewing Company and clung nicely in all the right places. Which was all of them.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, setting his water bottle down.
“I asked first.” I wasn’t quite ready to tell him I was out of a job. After all, I had to pay him rent, and I didn’t want him to worry.
“My dad loves the idea of me working on the house,” he said. “He told me he’d lighten my load for the next few weeks so I can help you get stuff done. He’s even sending a crew over later today to help us out. I want to get these stairs stable and make sure there are no holes in the floors before the bug crew comes later this week. They’re going to need access.”
“The bug crew — a work crew — why? I mean, wow. You got a lot done. But why does your dad want to help?”
Landon shrugged and took another sip of water before putting down the bottle. “I guess he wants to be on that sponsor plaque.” He grinned again. “You get the day off?”
“You could say that.”
“What?” The grin faded. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, shit. I might as well tell you. I got fired. Well, put on a ‘freelance basis,’ which is basically the same thing.”
“Oh, man. I’m sorry. But you didn’t like that job much anyway, did you?”
Landon was more observant than I gave him credit for. “No, not really. But it was a job. And I have to pay for all this. And — and rent, and — ”
Damn it. Tears pricked m
y eyes. I hated crying, but the truth was I cried at almost everything, though I did my best to keep the waterworks bottled up. Usually, I succeeded.
“Hey now,” Landon said, coming over and surprising me with a hug. A chill ran through my body. A good chill. My arms apparently acquired minds of their own, because they slipped around his waist without my permission, and he pulled me closer. My body ignored my brain and leaned deep into his snug, comforting embrace as he murmured into my hair, “It’s fine. Don’t worry about the rent.”
“But I do worry.” Oh my God, how can a man this sweaty smell so good? “I’m just a little overwhelmed right now.”
“Shhh.” His soft shushing was warm in my hair. “Shhhhhh.” Did I imagine it, or did he just sniff me?
Holy snotbuckets. We were standing there sniffing each other, rubbing each other’s backs, his body hard — whoa, even harder against mine …
I stepped back abruptly before my panties’ fire alarm went off and glanced up at Landon’s face. He wasn’t smiling now. In fact, he looked downright serious. Disturbed. A hundred percent lickable and simultaneously pained, as if he was struggling with something. He managed to paste a dim approximation of the Fireworks back on his face. “It’s OK, really. Hell, we’ll practically be living here for the next month anyway.”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
Living with Landon.
I lived with Landon now, but did I really? He was rarely there, and when he was, at least in the past, he was never really emotionally there. Not that a roommate needed to be emotionally present or anything, but —
OK. I was kind of lying now. Lying to myself. If anyone was absent these last several months, it was me. Because the last thing I wanted to do was get emotionally invested in some hot guy who thought he was God’s gift to women.
Or who I thought he thought was God’s gift to women.
I was really confused right now.
“So you’re here to work?” Landon finally said, sounding almost normal.
“Um, yes?”
His smile got real again, and his eyes gleamed. “OK. I’ve cut some new steps already and routed the edges, but they need sanding. You think you can handle that?”
“Sure,” I said. “Just put a tool in my hands and tell me what to do.”
“Baby, I’ve been waiting so long to hear you say that.”
I opened my mouth and closed it again, then smacked his arm. And my giggle mingled with his chuckle as he led me over to the workbench he’d set up among the debris that constituted my new mission in life.
“What kind of wood is this?” I asked as he pointed me to piles of cut boards. “It’s beautiful. It looks old.”
“It’s reclaimed wood from an old Florida factory. I thought it was appropriate for the house.”
“Where on earth did you get that?”
“I know a guy.” Landon smiled. “It’s longleaf pine. Sometimes called heart pine.”
I blinked at him and tried not to get all squishy again. I was dimly aware of the house sighing around us as I spoke. “That’s so — so sweet.”
He laughed. “See if you think so after you sand a couple dozen of them.”
Chapter 10
Two days later, the steps and railings were done. Not finished finished, as in stained and sealed, but they were solid, meaning no one was likely to die on the stairs unless the ghost got pissed off.
In addition, Landon’s dad’s work crew had patched up the floorboards with reclaimed boards where necessary so the bug guys could get in and deploy what I’d been calling the pipes of death.
The bug crew was here working already, even though it was almost sunset. They blasted classic rock from their boom box as they painstakingly used a crane to drape the tall house in huge red- and yellow-striped swaths of heavy fabric and clipped the panels together to make the tent for the termite-killing gas. I’d told them to be careful of the weathervanes, so they were setting up special scaffolding around them to support the tent. The kooky things were a signature of the historic house, and I didn’t want them damaged.
“You know, it’s a little melodramatic to call what they’re doing the pipes of death,” Landon said as we walked around the gazebo. Here on the river’s edge, the wind gently rustled the oaks and palms, and the water below glowed a pretty gray-blue as the sky turned orange.
We were trying to determine how much work it would require to make the gazebo event-ready. Let’s just say that we examined the thing from outside the gazebo, because its floor resembled rotten thatch more than it did a wooden platform.
“Pipes of death, I’m telling you. They’re piping in deadly poison, aren’t they?” I looked inside the gazebo and up. There was a hole in the ceiling, too.
“Well, yes. I think it’s more tubes than pipes, though it’s not really my area of expertise.”
“Semantics. They’re going to kill every living thing inside the house. I feel bad for the ghost.”
“The ghost isn’t living.”
“Says you.”
A corner of his mouth quirked up. “But at least you didn’t have to clear around the house.”
“True. And thanks for that.” I glanced back at Milkweed Manor, where the weedy foliage hugging the house had been trimmed back to make room for the tent.
“I know a lot of guys,” Landon said.
“I’ve noticed that. When am I going to get the bill?”
“Don’t worry about it. They’re going on the plaque.”
“This is going to have to be a really big plaque.”
“Do you mind?” he asked.
“Not if they are donating stuff, no. I’m grateful. But I’m thinking that I can work on the garden myself while the fumigation is happening, since we can’t go in the house.”
“We have three days. Let’s work on the garden far away from the house. Pipes of death give me the willies.”
“Ha, see? They are pipes of death. Anyway, maybe you should work on this instead of the garden,” I said, gesturing to the gazebo. “Can you fix it?”
Landon shook his head. “It might be historic, but I think it’s a goner.”
“Oh no!” I’d had romantic ideas about the gazebo. “I thought this would be perfect for parties and weddings and stuff.”
“Oh, I think you need a gazebo, but the most efficient thing will be to get a brand new one delivered and installed, made of marine-grade lumber and thoroughly anchored against hurricanes. Don’t worry. We’ll make it retro.”
“Cha-ching,” I said.
“Already got someone lined up,” he said. “I know a guy,” he added just as I said, “You know a guy.”
He laughed, and I smiled, though mine was on the thin side. “I worry that I owe too much. Owe you. Owe everyone else.”
“No one is donating who doesn’t want to. In fact, I’m starting to get calls from people I haven’t even tried to contact. Word is getting out. Everybody wants to be a part of this project.”
“That’s pretty cool, but — hey, who’s that?”
A hot little red convertible had turned into the lane and was now parking next to all the other vehicles in the drive. A woman with short, dark hair climbed out wearing a business suit as red as the car. She had a big bag, short skirt and heels that were not meant for this Florida jungle. She looked around, decided we were a better bet than the bug guys and made her way toward us.
“You know her?” I asked Landon.
“Jealous?” he teased.
“No! I mean, why? Is she your girlfriend or something?” I looked over at him in alarm, struck by how much I wanted him to say no.
He was choking back a laugh, the rascal. “I don’t know her at all. Honest.”
The woman, in her mid-thirties, I reckoned, approached with a red-lipstick smile. “Kayla Fetherole?” she queried.
“That’s me.”
“You own the house, right? I’m from the tourism office for Bohemia and Bohemia Beach. We wondered what we might do to help get the
word out about the renovation and the haunted house. People are really excited.”
“Uh, really?” I asked. She’s from the tourism office! All I could think about was the job I applied for there, and she was here about the house. “This is Landon Putter. He’s — he’s managing the project.”
Landon glanced at me in surprise, but he also seemed just a little bit pleased.
“I’m Marla Lyon. Pleased to meet you,” she said, reaching out and shaking hands with both of us. “Putter? From Putter Homes?”
“Unofficially, yeah,” Landon said.
“Pardon me for asking, but why is the tourism office interested, since the city doesn’t own the house?” I asked. “We’d love to get some push for the fundraiser, but —”
“Because this place is a treasure,” Marla gushed. All these people calling Milkweed Mansion a treasure have never actually been inside. “Plus you are doing the city of Bohemia a tremendous favor by turning it from an eyesore into the historic gem it’s meant to be. Especially if it’s going to be an event space. It could be a tourist attraction as well. We heard you might need a little … ” Marla paused in her enthusiastic monologue, looking embarrassed.
“Money? Help? Therapy? Publicity?” I said. “Yes to all of that.”
“We can’t provide money, per se, at least not yet. Though I understand you’re applying for one of our historic preservation grants” — I looked at Landon in puzzlement, and he gave me a little smile that suggested he’d done me yet one more favor — “and this kind of project is an obvious candidate for those funds. But in the meantime, we can get the word out to the usual outlets, do some PSAs for you, maybe even — ”
“We’d love the help, but you should know I actually have degrees in video production and marketing and plan to shoot some promo,” I interrupted her. “In fact, perhaps you saw my resume cross your desk?”
Marla’s eyes expanded in surprise. Her brow furrowed. Then the light of recognition dawned.
“Yes!” she said. “Oh my God! Kayla! You had a really lovely resume and some very nice footage! But I’m sorry to tell you that another candidate blew us away with his reel. He’s had so much experience in tourism, we’ll be lucky if he says yes.”
Bohemia Chills Page 6