by A. S. Green
“Ghosts don’t have habitats.”
“Uh-huh. If you say so.”
He gives his head a little shake, and we climb out, meeting at the back of the car. One of his hands goes to his neck, the other to his lower back as he arches. Instinctively, I react to his body language by closing my hands over his shoulders and working my thumbs into the corded muscles along his neck. “Better?”
Jax reacts instinctively, too. First groaning in pleasure, then tensing and quickly stepping away. My hands drop to my sides just as the smile fades from my lips.
“Best we get inside.” His tone tells me he doesn’t want to hurt my feelings, but I probably shouldn’t do that again. “It’s five thirty. There’s time to rest before we have to dress for dinner.”
He hands off the keys to the valet and grabs all the bags, with the exception of my largest suitcase, which stays in the car. The only things I have to carry are my purse and the new shoes Jax bought to go with my dress.
My phone goes off again. “Let me guess,” he says, sounding irritated. “One of your parents can’t find their front door.”
“Shut up. They’re not that bad.”
“They’re that bad. Don’t they know you’ve got your own life?”
I shrug. “They know that.”
I follow Jax up the stairs to the front door. He raises and lowers the iron knocker a few times before a small gray-haired woman opens the door and gestures for us to enter. She’s wearing a polo shirt with a circular logo that says Johan Lenz Mansion *1885 * Preservation Committee.
I step lightly over the floor, which looks like an elaborate kaleidoscope design made out of multicolored woods.
“Welcome to the Johan Lenz Mansion,” the old woman says.
“Thank you,” Jax replies. “I’m Charles Ridgeway, and may I introduce my cousin Natalie Ridgeway.”
“Of course, of course. Thank you for your interest in our project.” While she directs us toward the massive staircase, a young man wearing a similar polo shirt appears beside us. “This is Anthony,” she says. “He’ll help you get your bags up to your rooms. We do hope you enjoy your stay.”
“Thank you,” Jax says, and though he doesn’t look like he’s having any trouble with the bags, he acts as if he’s used to having other people do things for him. No one would doubt he’s rolling in it.
He’s even dressed better than when we started our trip, having taken the time to pull on a nice shirt while we were still in the department store parking lot. He didn’t ask me to do the same, so I’m still in my T-shirt and shorts. I don’t look much like an heiress, but I guess that’s fine; I’m just a “cousin.”
“This way, please,” Anthony says, directing us toward the stairs. The first step is flanked by mahogany posts topped with gold-leaf candelabras featuring actual candles that are lit and flickering.
“The other guests will be staying in the east wing,” Anthony says. “You were the last to RSVP, so we had to put you in the west wing. I hope that’s all right.”
“That’ll do fine,” Jax says as we pass several dark oil paintings of dead people who probably used to live here a hundred years ago and hopefully haven’t gone too far.
We head down a short hallway with a loose carpet runner. Anthony pushes open a door, and Jax takes his bags.
“Rest up,” Jax says to me before he heads into his room. “Be ready in an hour.”
I give him a nod and hurry to catch up with Anthony. He pushes open the door to my room, which is all the way at the end of the hall, and flips on the light. He sets my overnight bag on the floor and lays my new garment bag across the bed, then he leaves while I’m still taking in my surroundings.
The room is majestic, with more mahogany, a big canopy bed, and my own fireplace. The mantel is decorated with three small ceramic dogs in hunting poses. They’re set six inches behind the figure of a red fox that’s posed in midrun. It makes it look like the dogs are in pursuit. The poor fox is not having a very good day.
Just to give the dogs a taste of their own medicine, I turn the figures around so it’s the red fox who’s pursuing them. The new image feels like a foreshadowing for tonight because—take heed, John Fenton—this red fox is gonna get her dog.
Jax may not remember me from before, but I’m going to do such a good job for him tonight, he’s never going to forget me again.
Chapter Seventeen
Jackson
The only detail I bother to notice in the historic room is the four-poster bed, and that’s because every muscle in my body is screaming. I collapse onto the mattress and close my eyes. I could have used more of that massage Natalie seemed interested in giving me, but I had to nip that in the bud.
Keep a professional distance, I remind myself for the umpteenth time. She wrote you off once. That’s enough. Now she’s just a short-term contractor for JSI. Nothing more.
You’re so full of shit, Sparke.
Charlie again. Jesus. I roll over. Sometimes a simple change of position is enough to quiet his voice. Still, I know he’s partly right.
My pulse picks up at the memory of her lying, half naked, on my body only an hour or so ago. So much for keeping it professional.
I force my thoughts back to the job. John Fenton. His wife is convinced everything I need will be stored on his phone. I pray Natalie can pull off her part. Then I’ll have the office cut her a check and send her a 1099 at the end of the year. No fuss. No muss. Done.
Again.
Convincing myself this is how it has to be is like pushing spinach on a toddler: it’s the right thing but hard to stomach. Eat it and you can go to Disney World, kid. Believe you don’t need this woman in your life and you can get back to New York, back to the business you’ve built practically all on your own. Get on with life. Such as it is.
I wonder what Natalie’s doing down the hall. Maybe she’s a slob and has her clothes off and on the floor. Is she already in the shower?
It requires some effort to clear the image of soap suds and shampoo sliding over her naked body. Ultimately I succeed by imagining she’s probably calling home, making sure everyone is surviving okay in her absence. It makes me want to put the hurt on all the people who taught her to think they couldn’t get on without her. She wanted to go to the Grammys. She wanted to manage a band, hear them thanking her from the stage.
Jesus, even in her fantasies she’s out there trying to make life better for someone else. Murray would probably call her a generous spirit. I know better. It’s every man for himself.
I frown as I turn over in bed. Gram would be all over my case if she heard me talk like that. “Is that the way I raised you?”
“No, Gram.” I let my head settle into the pillow. “But that’s the way it is.”
Over nine hours in a car…this whole fucked-up situation…I’m beat. There’s still an hour before dinner. It doesn’t take any time for me to doze off. It takes even less time for the familiar voices to fill my subconscious: “Let’s get this over with.”
I’m in the dream again—five years old and pulling back on my mother’s hand. “It’s going to hurt.”
“Jesus, kid. It’s just a haircut.”
We open the bedroom door, and someone screams. I jump and cower behind my mother’s legs. More people yelling. Bad words.
My mother is gripping the doorframe. “It’s the middle of the afternoon, Jimmy. Get that filthy whore out of my house!”
“I don’t see your name on the deed, woman.”
In the dream, I slip into the corner of my parents’ bedroom, but I can’t shut out the yelling. Something hits the wall. A hand wraps around my wrist, and I am yanked out of the corner. My feet barely touch the ground. It’s the last time I ever see my father.
As my mother pulls me back down the stairs, she says, “Life is just subtraction, subtraction, subtraction. Best you learn that now.”
My whole life, it was the only true thing I can remember her ever telling me.
Soon my dream does wha
t it always does. My mother morphs into Gram, morphs into the inside of a Chinook helicopter. I cling to my pillow. A part of me knows I’m whimpering in my sleep.
Ridgeway’s beside me. Charlie is sitting across from us, barely perceptible. The helicopter’s rotor blades beat steadily. There are nearly thirty of us buried in darkness. Relaxed. Headed back.
I jerk in my sleep when we take the hit. My skin burns. No, not this. Not this.
“We’re hit!” It’s a voice from the darkness. “They’ve got the pylon.”
“Why the fuck is someone shooting at us?” Ridgeway. I don’t see his face. Only his meaty hands wrapped tight around the thick straps at his shoulders. Those hands that slapped me on the back after we survived Hell Week. “Congratu-fucking-lations, man!”
I roll over, and my fingers dig into the mattress. My head seems to vibrate with the sound of the rotor blades, stuttering…stuttering…
My stomach slams against my throat, and I claw at the sheets. The bottom drops out from under me. Oh, Christ, we’re falling. Falling and spinning like some demented carnival ride.
The centrifugal force makes my face feel like it’s split in two, each half sliding behind my ears. Vomit is rising in my throat, and I’m bracing for an impact that just won’t come.
I can feel the earth rushing up to meet us. Air compresses around me, pushing on my chest, wringing out my lungs, and then…a second of silence before…
Explosion. Deafening. Concussing.
“Jax!” A voice. Far away.
Dark water rises over my ankles, slowly wicking up my body, engulfing me.
“Jax, help me. I’m trapped.”
Charlie? Charlie! I can’t find him. Where’s Charlie? I crawl and scratch, trying to get closer, but the voice keeps pulling away. I’m moving as fast as I can, churning the water. I can’t find him. I can’t find him!
“Charlie!” I gasp loudly, and a lungful of air rakes down my throat. With it, I lurch upward and find myself alive, sitting slumped at the edge of a mattress.
For a second I don’t know where I am, and then I do. Oh, shit. Oh, Jesus. A trickle of sweat slides down my spine. This is why I sleep alone.
Chapter Eighteen
Natalie
At six thirty sharp, just as Jax instructed, I step out of my room. I’m back in the dress, and it’s as amazing as I remembered, only better with the new shoes, which are so high I might get a nosebleed. I look down to make sure one of my breasts hasn’t escaped the deep V neckline, but they aren’t going anywhere.
My hair is twisted and pinned into the best updo I can manage on my own, with several long tendrils hanging down. I’ve never been able to tame it into anything sleek, which is what I suppose the rich women here tonight will be sporting. But Jax said he wanted sexy, and this fits the bill. My hair kinda looks like it had once been sleek but got a bit mussed after a tryst in a coat closet. The power of suggestion. I hope John Fenton takes the bait. I don’t want to let Jax down.
When Jax exits his room and looks toward my door, his chest inflates with air, and he blinks as if dazzled. “Christ.”
Bingo. It’s a similar reaction to the one he gave me at the department store, only better, so I think it must be the hair that makes the difference.
“Will this do?” I ask, playing innocent.
“You look…” His Adam’s apple bobs. “You’ll do.”
I roll my eyes. “Humph.” This hair? This dress? These shoes? I’ll more than do.
He comes closer. God, he looks good in his tux. Like James Bond. His beard is gone, and I want to run my hand over his clean-shaven face, but of course I don’t. There’s something else different about him—it’s in his expression, or the air about him, as if he were able to subtly adjust his features into those of somebody else.
Then I realize that’s exactly what he’s done. Hello, Charlie Ridgeway.
“I didn’t want to risk jamming the zipper. Help me out, okay?” I turn around.
He hesitates for a second, and I think I hear him swallow. His breath is warm on the nape of my neck. “What’s that smell?”
I look over my shoulder at him with my eyebrows drawn together. “Good smell or bad smell?”
“Good.”
“My perfume. It’s gardenias.”
His mouth tightens, then, after another second, he places one large hand on my left shoulder. His thumb presses in to hold the top edges of the dress together and, with his right hand, he slowly raises the zipper, starting at midback and working up the length of my spine. The sizzling sound of metal teeth, his warm, strong touch, just him standing so close. All of it working together sends goose bumps skittering down my arms.
When he’s done, Charlie Ridgeway squeezes my shoulders and says, “All right. Let’s go, cuz.”
Voices bubble up the staircase from the drawing room below. Jax takes several steps in that direction before he realizes I haven’t moved. He stops and looks over his shoulder at me. “Something wrong?”
My legs won’t move. What was I thinking? I’m no Mata Hari. I don’t even know what to say to these people.
He reaches out and takes my hand. His is big and warm, and his fingers engulf mine. I remember this. God, I want more of this.
“Stick as close as you can to the truth. You’re my cousin. We met up at a wedding. You asked to come to Chicago with me because you’d never seen the city before.”
I nod and exhale. “Okay. I got this.”
He squeezes my hand to say he believes in me, but this time I can’t tell if it’s Jax or cousin Charlie.
…
Over the next few minutes, all of the guests filter into the drawing room. Dorothy Halderman, the old woman who greeted us when we first arrived, is no longer in her preservation society polo shirt but rather in midnight-blue taffeta. She looks nervous. I don’t blame her. The future of her beloved house depends on the success of this evening.
The men are all in tuxes. The women wear black, ivory, silver, and one woman of Middle Eastern descent is gorgeous in a deep-burgundy gown.
Jax and I are standing shoulder to shoulder by the fireplace. My smile is tight, but Jax is perfectly at ease as he greets two gray-haired real estate tycoons from Chicago, Mr. Comb-Over and Mr. Weak Chin, along with their wives.
“Charles Ridgeway,” Jax says, greeting them. “And this is my cousin Natalie.”
“Ridgeway?” a thin woman with short-cropped hair asks as she walks over from the bar. “From Toronto?”
“The same.”
I give Jax a look of surprise, because it’s impressive how deep his ruse goes.
“You must be Ms. Feinstein,” he says to the woman.
“Janet Feinstein. Feinstein Foods,” she says, reaching behind herself to grab the arm of a balding gentleman who has his eyes on his drink. “And this is my husband, Marvin.”
They all shake hands, and while that is happening, the Sharifs shake my hand. Mrs. Sharif tells me my dress is “divine.”
Last to arrive is John Fenton III. “My wife,” he says, “unfortunately, could not make it.”
The guests are all talking and smiling, making simple pleasantries but not yet acknowledging the point of the dinner. It seems everyone else has met at various functions before, so they’re excited to meet Charles Ridgeway from Toronto and his “enchanting cousin.”
I try not to snort with amusement. Jax, on the other hand, is smooth as silk. The amount of detail in his backstory is amazing. I’m hearing it for the first time now, and I have no doubt if anyone googled him, they’d come up with his birth certificate—born to a French Canadian family with roots going back to a fur trapper; the family first made their fortune in lumber.
“Always looking up,” Jax says with a sly smile that makes his eyes glint, “so naturally trees and lumber morphed into steel and skyscrapers.”
Everyone laughs. Damn Jax for being so charming. I could admire him all night, but my focus is supposed to be elsewhere. The bar is open and scotch is poured.
“Can I get you something?” Jax whispers close to my ear as he gently touches my elbow. It sends a shiver down my arm that I’m sure he can feel.
“Tequila?” I whisper back. Something, anything, to take the edge off.
He smiles knowingly, but a second later he comes back with a glass of white wine so clear it’s practically water. “Sip it slow. You’re working, and you need to stay alert.”
Right. I’m to flirt with Fenton. Distract him so Jax can get his phone and whatever info he needs from it, then return the phone to Fenton before he realizes it’s missing. No sweat.
It seemed a lot simpler when we were talking about it in the car. Less so now that the man is standing fifteen feet in front of me.
Fenton is in his late forties, maybe fifty. He’s tall and fit, with still mostly pepper in his salt-and-pepper hair. I don’t miss that his eyes keep landing on my breasts every twenty seconds or so. No wonder his wife is suspicious. The guy’s a complete douche.
“Keep a bead on him,” Jax says as he raises his glass to his lips. “In about five minutes, one of my guys is going to call his cell. When Fenton answers, watch where he keeps his phone. Probably one of his jacket pockets, though it could be his pants.”
“Great,” I say, taking a swig of wine. I’m looking straight ahead. At the wall. Into the abyss. I hope to God this evening doesn’t end with me fishing my hand into a stranger’s front pants pocket.
“We don’t have to try anything before dinner,” Jax says, taking a step back. “We can wait until after we eat. By then he’ll have had plenty to drink.”
“Roger that.”
Jax’s face softens. “Did I tell you you look great in that dress?”
“You did,” I say, still not looking at him. My body tingles, then goes numb. It can’t be the wine.
“Fenton’s looked at you more than once already.” Jax narrows his eyes at the man.
“Well aware.”
Jax puts his hand on the back of my arm, pulling me closer, and my skin warms where he touches me. Every other part of my body is jealous. “Are you sure you’re up for this? You don’t have to do it.”
