“Fine,” I relented, falling in step beside him for the short walk to the kitchen.
“That’s my girl,” he murmured, draping an arm across my shoulders.
I was so shocked that I couldn’t speak for a full minute. He glanced down at me and smiled at my slack jaw, seemingly amused by the reaction he’d gotten out of me.
“Hey, save some for me,” he bellowed, letting me go to join the kids at the table, laying my envelope across his thigh. Stacking four pancakes onto his plate, he drenched them in syrup. “Who’s ready to break out the water guns?”
Max and Emma’s faces lit up. “Me!” they cried in unison.
Taking a few of the pancakes for myself, I gave in to the hunger gnawing on my stomach. Tate was right; it would be hours before Emma went down for her nap. Talking over what I’d found would have to wait.
“Since when are there water guns?” I asked, reaching for the syrup bottle.
“Since forever,” Tate replied around a mouthful of pancake. “They’re in the shed.”
“Okay,” I said with a shrug. “If you guys insist. But I must warn you, I’m deadly with a water pistol. You’re all going down.”
“Please,” Tate muttered, rolling his eye. “I’m the master. You’re in so much trouble.”
We finished breakfast quickly, then Tate and I herded the kids outside. The guys went to the shed for the water guns, while Emma and I began planning our strategy of attack. The guns were passed out, then the fight was on, with Emma and me running and hiding behind trees and waiting for the guys to come after us before unleashing on them from our hiding places. It worked until Tate bum-rushed Emma, picking her up and throwing her over his shoulder before taking her gun. That left me at the boys’ mercy, with Max coming up behind me, and Tate hitting me from the front with Emma’s pistol. The boys’ triumphant victory ended our game, but we couldn’t step foot inside still soaked head to toe, so we spent some time on the trampoline.
After a while, I was worn out from jumping, but Max and Emma weren’t ready to stop. So, I retreated up the steps to the porch, where I sat with my legs hanging over the edge, watching as Tate taught Max how to perform backflips on the massive trampoline. After Max had mastered the backflip and forward somersault, he attempted to teach Emma, who had a harder time of it.
Tate left them to it and crossed the yard to join me on the porch. He sat beside me, so close his leg brushed mine. I sucked in a breath and swallowed past my constricting throat, thanking God that my skin was too dark for him to see me blush.
“I’m tired,” he said between short breaths. “I haven’t played with them like that in a while.”
I turned to glance at him and smiled. He looked happier than I’d ever seen him—his waves turned to curls by the water, his face a bit flushed from all the jumping and flipping, that lopsided smile curving his mouth. His eyes glittered with excitement as he glanced back at the trampoline and the two kids jumping and squealing there.
“You were right, you know,” he said.
When he didn’t elaborate, I leaned into him and gave him a nudge with my shoulder. “About what? You’re going to have to be more specific, because I’m generally right about everything.”
He laughed, nudging me back, his shoulder pressing against mine. “About Max. I didn’t think he wanted anything to do with me, but you were right. I feel like I’ve missed out on being there for him. My dad turned into a robot around the time I got sick, and I got so caught up in my own problems that I neglected them.”
I placed my hand over his. “You didn’t mean to neglect them. You were sick. But you’re trying now, and they seem to appreciate it. Especially Max.”
He glanced at the kids, and then back at me. “They’re so happy with you here. I don’t think I’ve ever seen them respond to their past sitters or nannies like they do you.”
I shrugged. “I just do my job. They make it easy being such great kids.”
Shaking his head, he intertwined his fingers with mine. “Don’t be modest. Making people happy is kind of your thing. The kids aren’t the only ones who look forward to you being here every day.”
He fell silent, lowering his eyes as if embarrassed. I wasn’t sure he’d meant to say what he did, but once it had come out, there was no taking it back.
I studied his face, my gaze skimming his lowered lids and long lashes, the line of his nose, undisturbed by the degeneration on one side of his face, then down lower… to the perfect pillow of his mouth.
Seized with a sudden urge, I didn’t second-guess it. The tension between us had become so palpable I could barely breathe in his presence. He’d dropped so many hints, but I was tired of guessing.
I needed to know.
Closing the distance between us, I brushed my lips against his. The contact only lasted for a second before Tate jerked away, sucking in a sharp breath. His eyes went wide, and then his eyebrows furrowed as if he wasn’t quite sure what had just happened. I bit my lip, staring back at him in silence and waiting for him to say something.
Tate didn’t say a word. Instead, he reached up with one hand, cupping the back of my neck and pulling me toward him again. His forehead rested against mine, and he stared at me for another moment, his fingers curling into the hair at the nape of my neck. Then, he was kissing me—gently at first, slowly, as if afraid I might not like it. I did. His lips were soft and feather light against mine, the gentle touch of his fingers on the back of my neck sending tingles down my spine.
I reached up to cup his face, pulling him closer and deepening the kiss. His other hand found my waist, sliding across my back until he was holding me against him. Our mouths moved together like a dance, opening, touching, pulling apart, and coming together again at a different angle. His scent invaded my nostrils—that masculine smell I was coming to associate with him. He tasted like syrup and something else… something I had never tasted before, but found myself craving it the second our mouths had pulled apart.
His breath raced as he stared at me in silence, a slight smile curving one side of his mouth—now slightly red from the pressure of mine. Closing his mouth, he cleared his throat, lowered his eyes, and then raised them to look at me again.
“Wow,” he whispered.
“Yeah,” I agreed with a smile.
We sounded like a couple of morons, but there wasn’t much that could be said about what had happened. The kiss had been perfect—sweet, slow, and bone melting. I had never felt this way after being kissed, and, at the moment, I didn’t know if I should be excited or afraid.
“Eeewwwww!” Emma cried out from the trampoline, sitting cross-legged on the mesh while Max continued bouncing beside her. “They’re kissing!”
“Gross,” Max teased, turning a front somersault and continuing his up-and-down motion, causing Emma to bounce beside him. “Tate and Bellamy sittin’ in a tree,” he sang as he jumped. “K-I-S-S-I-N-G!”
Tate chuckled, and I put a bit of space between us, embarrassed at having been caught. The last thing I needed was one of them blabbing to Ezra about what they’d seen.
“We’ll have to do that again when they aren’t around,” he murmured.
Turning to look at him, I experienced a little thrill at the thought of doing it again. “Definitely. But, you know, now that we’ve kissed…”
He wrinkled his brow when I trailed off. “What?”
I grinned. “You’re really going to have to man up and ask me out.”
A laugh shook his shoulders, and he stood from the porch, turning to face me. “I can’t exactly avoid it after being called out like that. Will you go out with me Saturday? We can catch a movie or something.”
“Do I get to pick the movie?” I teased.
“Yes, and if you pick a good one, there will also be popcorn mixed with M&Ms,” he fired back.
Rising to face him, I reached out and grabbed the front of his shirt, pulling him toward me until our bodies were touching. Standing on tiptoe, I gave him another, shorter kiss on
the lips.
“You got yourself a date,” I murmured.
Before he could reply, Max’s voice rang out across the yard. “They’re doing it again!”
Emma retched, pretending to throw up, while Max continued to sing about love, marriage, and a baby carriage for Tate and me. Giggling, I released him and backed away, while Tate took a few steps back as well, one hand coming up to rub the back of his neck.
“Let’s not bring them,” he muttered.
“Yeah, good plan,” I replied with a smirk.
After lunch, the kids were so worn out from their time outside that they collapsed in the playroom in a heap, both falling asleep on the rug. After covering them with blankets, Tate and I retreated to the den, where we finally found the solitude and silence to go over the information I’d gathered.
“Okay,” I said, retrieving my papers from the envelope. “I think I figured out the identity of one of the ghosts.”
Tate widened his eyes, giving me an incredulous look. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”
I shrugged. “You were all ‘pancakes first.’ Who was I to argue with that? Anyway, I got to thinking last night that I was on the wrong track looking for murders. So I switched my search to accidents and discovered something. There were more accidental deaths in Wellhollow Springs in the year leading up to the groundbreaking of East Valley than any other year before or after it. For some reason, people were dying in bizarre ways. While going through news stories about these accidents, I came across this.”
I separated the paper-clipped article about Camila Vasquez from the stack and handed it to Tate, whose eyes moved side to side as he quickly scanned it. Once he reached the end of the article and the photo of Camila, he froze, his gaze locked on the image.
“This is incredible,” he murmured. “Add a shard of glass in her neck and misshapen limbs, and you have one of my ghosts. It says here she died not far from Baldwin House. Maybe her haunting us has something to do with proximity.”
I shrugged. “Maybe… or, could be she was here for a reason. The woman was an FBI agent from Virginia. What the heck was she doing in Wellhollow Springs?”
“Hell if I know,” he murmured, accepting another article from me. “This guy fell off a ladder while fixing his shingles and broke his neck.”
Holding up another article, I raised my eyebrows. “This woman wandered into a construction site, where a steel beam fell, severing her almost in half. And here’s another one who drowned in his hot tub—according to the article, he had been drinking, which caused him to pass out before sinking down into the tub.”
“Okay, granted, those are some bizarre ways to die,” he relented. “But this Camila woman was in a regular car accident. Highway 8 leads past these hills and out of town—there are a lot of twists and turns, and, at night, it can be dangerous if you aren’t careful. Maybe she just lost control of the car.”
“Yes, but she isn’t the one whose death requires justice,” I reminded him. “She indicated the other ghost when I asked her who the justice was for. Camila was in the FBI, so maybe she was in the process of seeking justice when she died.”
Tate nodded. “That makes a lot of sense. The fact that her search for justice brought her to Wellhollow can’t be a coincidence.”
“No, it can’t,” I agreed. “Camila Vasquez is the key. We need to know why she was here.”
“Maybe the case of the other dead woman brought her here. Were there any women who looked like her who suffered accidents in town?”
I shook my head. “There were two women, but neither look like the other ghost. But there’s a connection; we just have to find it.”
“You did good, Bell. This is a huge piece of the puzzle,” he said. “Now we know how to move forward from here. Let’s set the info about the other deaths aside for now and concentrate on Camila. I’ll keep digging on Canton Haines. We’ll get this figured out.”
Removing my glasses, I rubbed my eyes, which had begun to water from fatigue and focusing too long on the pages. “I know. I thought we’d hit the wall, but I’m glad we have more to go on now.”
Snatching the papers from me, he tossed them aside. “Okay, enough of that.”
I scowled when he tossed them, causing the pages to fly free of their paper clips, fluttering through the air and making a mess all over the carpet.
“Dude, do you know how long it took me to organize all that?”
Reaching for me, he rose up on his knees, pulling me until I rested in the same position facing him. “I’ll pick it up in a sec. First, I do believe we were so rudely interrupted earlier. I got cheated out of a kiss.”
I brought my hands up to his waist, holding on to him as he cupped my face in his hands. As he lowered his lips to mine, I sank against him and lost myself in the moment. I hadn’t wanted to let myself hope that something could come of this thing that had developed between Tate and me, but, at this point, there was no going back. I was invested in him, in more ways than one. I didn’t know if what we’d found would last, but I did know I’d never experienced anything like it.
Saturday night came way too fast. When Tate had first asked me to go out with him, it had seemed so far off—several days spanning between then and now. But as I stared at myself in the mirror, critiquing my outfit and wondering what the hell I could be thinking, I wished I’d had more time to prepare. Or at least talk myself out of it. I didn’t have any delusions about myself. Being the kind of girl who prefers Converse over heels and books over boys, I didn’t typically attract the high school male species. But Tate wasn’t in high school anymore, and our situation was anything but regular.
Yet, here I stood in a dress, wearing makeup with my hair down, experiencing the worst case of the butterflies. Tate had seen me in frizzy ponytails and ripped jeans. He’d seen my face contorted into expressions of terror and streaked with tears in grief. Why did it matter if my lipstick was right, or if my curls lay in perfect order?
Because this was the first real step toward taking us out of the friend zone, that was why. I couldn’t seem to make myself settle on an outfit or make a decision about how my hair should be styled.
Grabbing a large butterfly clip from my dresser, I gathered my hair in the back, twisting it and allowing a cascade of curls to fall forward, sweeping the rest off the back of my neck. Securing it with the clip and a few bobby pins, I studied myself. The updo showed off my neck and cheekbones. But Tate had seemed to like twining his fingers through it, so maybe I shouldn’t have restricted it with a clip.
Sighing, I plucked out the pins and the clip, shaking my head to loosen the curls. Much better. Or was it?
“Ugh!” I grunted, frustrated with both myself and my wayward hair.
Turning away from the mirror, I realized I didn’t have much more time until Tate would arrive to pick me up. I had offered to meet him at the theater, but he’d insisted on coming to get me himself. Going into the closet, I grabbed a pair of black flats—cute enough to match my dress but still comfortable enough that I wouldn’t be tripping over myself all night. After sliding them on, I grabbed a jacket in case I got cold in the theater.
By the time I made my way to the living room, the headlights of Tate’s car were shining through the front window. Glancing up from the TV, Dad raised his eyebrows.
“You look pretty, munchkin. Tonight’s the date, right?”
I fumbled with the strap of my purse and avoided his gaze. Not long after insisting Tate and I were only friends, I’d found myself forced to admit that we were possibly going to start dating. Dad had seemed okay with it, though, so I was glad he didn’t intend to give Tate a hard time. He seemed content to let me make the decision on my own.
“Yes, Dad. He just pulled up outside. We’re going to a movie, and then probably to Charlene’s for something to eat after.”
The doorbell rang, and I tensed, tightening my grip on the strap of my purse.
Dad stood, giving me a playful glance. “I’ll get it.”<
br />
I groaned. “Do we have to do this?”
He chuckled. “I’m your dad. You’ve never let a boy come to the house to pick you up. Let me have this.”
I stood back and tried not to look like I was about to be sick. “He’s all yours.”
His big body kept me from being able to see Tate when he opened the door, but I could hear his voice when he spoke.
“Hi, Mr. McGuire. I’m here to pick up Bellamy.”
Dad backed away from the door. “She’s ready. The girl only changed her outfit six times.”
My eyes almost bugged out of my head. “Dad!”
Tate smirked, but I could see he was trying not to laugh. “Well, it paid off. You look great.”
My stomach quivered as his gaze slid over me, taking in the short dress and my exposed legs. “Thank you.”
Dad cleared his throat, reminding us that he was still in the room. Tate’s cheeks flushed red, and he glanced away, clearing his throat.
“So, we should be back by eleven, sir,” he said.
I glanced at the clock on our cable box. It was eight now… which wouldn’t give us much time after the movie ended. Bummer.
“Make it midnight,” Dad said, shocking me with a smile. “So you don’t have to rush back after the movie.”
Tate’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Okay. Thank you, sir.”
“You can call me Nate, son,” Dad said. “Relax.”
Nodding, Tate cleared his throat again. “Okay… Nate.”
Staring back and forth between them, I fought the urge to giggle. Tate was clearly nervous, despite having already met my dad, and Dad was having a lot of fun with it.
“We’re going to miss the movie if we don’t hurry,” I said.
“I won’t hold you up,” Dad replied. “You kids have fun. Bellamy, I’ll see you when you get home.”
Tate held the door open for me, and we made our escape, stepping out onto the porch. Dad watched from behind the screen door while we walked to the car, and I waved as we pulled off in the direction of downtown.
“Holy crap,” Tate said, exhaling with relief once we’d made it up the street. “I don’t think I’ve ever been that nervous picking a girl up for a date. I was afraid I would say something stupid and make your dad hate me.”
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