The steaming water reminded her to put on her rubber gloves. Maybe she could forget about Ben, but she doubted it. Not if she couldn't even remember to do something so routine that she'd done it every day of her adult life. Tears almost as scalding as the water rolled down her cheeks as she pulled on the gloves. Not because of Ben, she tried to convince herself, but because of the hot water.
Cleanup done, pots gleaming in the drying rack, Corrie made one last inspection of the kitchen. There was nothing else to do to keep herself from thinking about Ben, the man she had just scared away.
She could always busy herself making fudge brownies, but that would mean another mess to clean up later. Not that it wouldn't help to keep her mind occupied longer. Or, she could go to bed, guaranteed that her dreams would be full of Ham.
Ben.
Why had she called him Ham?
Or, she could go to the register and look up Ben's address and phone number and call him and ask him to come back.
She'd beg if she had to.
Corrie went to the door, turned off the lights, and headed through the darkened dining room for the registration desk.
****
Ben stood in the dark, gaping doorway staring, unbelieving, at the scene displayed before him. He didn't know how long he'd been there, but however long, the view hadn't changed. Or had. He blinked.
It was still there.
He rubbed his disbelieving eyes until sparks flew behind his lids.
The familiar appearance of the front grounds — and it was still familiar — had changed. Yet, it was as it should be. Or, perhaps, had been.
The same flagstone walk still led from the front steps to the oyster-shelled lane still canopied by huge oak trees bearded with Spanish moss. Two magnolias still rattled their thick, leathery leaves in the cool night breeze coming in off the distant Gulf.
But no longer were the beach and the water obscured by the towering magnolia trees. He could see across the road to the strip of land that separated Venable House from the narrow beach and the water.
He blinked again. But the vista still hadn't changed. He smelled the thick profusion of honeysuckle that grew amid the brush and perfumed the moisture laden air. He looked beyond the beach to where the water retreated and blended into the slightly brighter horizon.
Gentle waves lapped against the shore, leaving deposits of foamy froth in their wakes that disappeared into the sand as the water withdrew. Further out, he could see the spark of tiny phosphorescent organisms in the water as the waves broke before reaching land. Ben shook his head.
He shouldn't be able to see any of this.
Ben clutched at the cold, reassuring hardness of the door jamb feeling the grain of the wood and the smoothness of the polish that made it shine in the light of day. Anything to assure him that he wasn't dreaming. Everything around him was as firm and solid as it should be, yet even as he looked around, he could see that it was different, though still the same.
The registration desk was gone, along with the antique wall phone and the rack for room keys. On the wall was a landscape reminiscent of Turner or Constable — he wished he'd paid more attention in art appreciation class. Below the painting was a settee or some sort of un-upholstered love seat.
The lobby and the dining room were essentially the same, yet the fabric on the furniture was different. The patterns on the upholstery had changed, or at least were newer.
Suddenly, Ben felt weak as if his legs wouldn't hold him, and he sank to his knees. He knew what he was seeing, but he didn't want to believe it.
If he'd harbored any doubt that Ham and Cory were occupying this house, it fled when Corrie Wallace quietly entered the dining room — or was it Cory with a y? — dressed in the white, high-necked, ruffled lace wedding gown he'd seen in the picture that — he glanced at the spot where it had been — was no longer on the wall.
"Corrie, tell me that you see what I'm seeing." Ben closed his disbelieving eyes and prayed that she'd give him the right answer.
****
Corrie stumbled over a rag throw rug when she heard Ben's strangled request. She righted herself, searching for the source of the sound in the darkened room. She'd thought him gone, perhaps irrevocably, from her life, and yet she'd heard his voice.
Or had she?
She groped her way to a wall switch and flipped on the light and blinked as it illuminated the room with incandescent brilliance. She glanced around again and spotted Ben, on his knees in the opened front doorway.
Instinct took over, and Corrie rushed to him, fearing that he was hurt. "What? What happened?" Her heart pounded loud enough to deafen any response.
She touched his shoulder, preparing for the anticipated shock wave when their bodies met. There was no answering jolt. Disappointed, she withdrew her hand. "Ben? Are you hurt?"
He looked up at her then, slowly as if waking from sleep and was still in a daze. "It's gone," he murmured, almost as if questioning himself. "I know I saw it, but it's gone."
Alarmed at Ben's slurring voice and apparent leave of his senses, Corrie took his hand and pulled him to his feet. Was he drunk? Corrie dismissed that idea; they'd only had a few glasses of wine with dinner.
Only after he'd stumbled up, lurching into the door jamb, and drawn himself straight did she notice that the humming tingle had returned, crossing from him to her.
"What did you see, Ben? What's gone?"
He looked at her as if he'd just noticed her standing there, and Corrie's concern edged past alarm to fear. What had gotten into him? Was this attractive, intelligent man a loony? Some sort of psycho whose true colors only came out in the dark of night?
"You didn't see it." Ben's remark was a statement, not a question, his tone as dull as a one-inch pencil. He looked at her as if seeing her for the first time and raised a hand to her face, grazing her cheek with his knuckles, brushing a stray hair away from her jaw.
Corrie's skin tingled as she leaned forward to accept his searching fingers. Realizing that her traitorous body was actually responding to the touch of a crazy man, Corrie jerked back, and Ben withdrew his hand.
"I saw Cory — the other Cory — standing in the dark dining room wearing a white lace wedding dress, but when I looked again, it was you." He rubbed his eyes wearily, groaning with the misery of the world. "I don't know. Maybe it was you in the first place."
Corrie looked at him again. How could this be the same man who had only minutes before — had only half an hour passed? — kissed her so passionately in the kitchen? He looked around the room, his eyes dull, searching as if he were looking for something he couldn't find.
"What didn't I see? You have to explain it to me, Ben. How can I confirm it if I don't know what you're talking about?"
Ben ran an unsteady hand through his hair and sucked in a gusty breath. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
If Ben didn't explain what was going on right that minute, Corrie would scream. Though what good it would do, she didn't know. There was nobody close enough to hear her. She looked at Ben's bewildering expression and real fear shot through her. Had he seen something on the road? She pushed past him and stared into the darkness.
"You won't see anything now. The light…" Ben drew in a shuddering breath. "The light killed it."
"What did it kill, Ben? What?" Corrie felt panic cut through the deceptive quiet of the spring evening.
Ben opened his mouth as if to answer then shut it again. Corrie could see his eyes moving furtively from the opened doorway to her face and could almost hear the gears turning in his brain.
She clutched his bare arm, ignoring the tingle that passed between them as her hand touched his bare skin. "You're scaring me, Ben. Tell me what you saw."
As if in a trance, Ben answered. "I saw the trees and the road and the waves lapping against the shore."
"Of course you did, Ben. I see them too." But Corrie's breath caught as the latter portion of Ben's description registered. "Wait a minute! You can't see the Gul
f from here."
Ben turned, a crooked smile wiping away the dull mask he'd been wearing. Now he looked like the man she'd kissed so much earlier. "But you could have in 1899."
Corrie stared at him, blinking stupidly as her mind tried to process what he'd just told her. Then she drew in a sharp breath and let it back out slowly. He'd as much as told her that he'd looked a hundred years into the past. "But that's not possible."
****
Elation forced its way into Ben's consciousness, shouldering past doubt and beyond disbelief. He'd found it! He'd found what he needed to prove a supernatural connection between Ham and Cory's incredibly romantic story and the real world. He looked at Corrie and saw the fear and doubt written plainly on her pale face, whitened further by her distress and fear. No! He'd have done anything to keep from seeing that frightened expression again so soon after he'd nearly scared her senseless with his kiss.
"I know it isn't possible, Corrie. Not usually. I know it intellectually, yet I want to believe." He drew in a deep breath as he searched for the words to describe — explain — the phenomenon he'd just witnessed. "It's called retro-cognition."
"Retro-cognition?" Corrie's brows knitted. "I don't know what that is," she murmured, then quieted for a moment, thinking. "Retro recognition." She looked up at him. "Recognizing the past?"
"Yes." Ben cheered inwardly at how quickly Corrie had stumbled on that clumsy definition. "It's a spontaneous vision of something or some place as it appeared in the past." He looked down at her, still seeing the cloud of doubt in Corrie's troubled eyes. "When I opened the door to leave, I saw the grounds and Venable House — not the inn — as they were, I presume, in Ham and Cory's time.
Disbelief still marred Corrie's intelligent features. "But how is that possible?"
Ben shook his head. "I don't know how. All I know is that when I opened that door, I saw everything that I see now…" He glanced over his shoulder and through the opened door then he tugged the heaving oak slab quietly to him until it closed with a soft click. "Except it was different. Younger. Newer." Seeing Corrie's still uncomprehending expression, he went on. "The registration area was gone, and in its place was a wooden bench and over it was a painting that looked like it was of an English countryside."
Ben watched as Corrie's eyes fleeted to the spot on the wall that he had described. The key rack was back where it had been when he'd registered. And, of course, no wooden settee stood beneath a large framed painting.
He didn't wait for Corrie to protest, but gestured toward the grouping in the lobby and charged recklessly on. "This furniture or something like it was here in a slightly different configuration. It was different somehow, shinier, newer." He walked toward the dining room. "There was a huge, family style table there." He pointed. "The kind with lots of leaves to add along with the extra plates when you have company. And a huge chandelier hung over it." An electrified version of the old candle-burning fixture still hung from the ceiling in the center of the room, but four small, round tables clustered beneath it.
And Ben knew his excitement was making him say things he shouldn't, but he couldn't keep from going on. "Outside, the grounds, again they were the same, but younger. The magnolias that block the view of the water were only a head or two taller than me. There was plenty of space between them for me to see all the way to the Gulf. And I did, with all the color and detail of a Technicolor movie."
Corrie interrupted him, the doubt evident on her expressive face. "Are you sure you didn't imagine it?" Corrie's touch was cool and grounding as her fingers closed over his shoulder.
Ben reached up and covered her hand with his and was rewarded by the spark of electricity that arced between them. He turned to face her. "I don't know, Corrie. There are some who insist that all examples of clairvoyance are nothing but cases of overworked imaginations in highly strung people." He looked at Corrie, knowing exactly how it must appear to her. "What do you think? Am I imagining it?"
She withdrew her hand, bringing it in front of her and covering it with the other. She rubbed her fingers against her yellow dress, opening and closing her hand as if she were trying to erase or rub out the feel of his touch. Ben knew what Corrie must be feeling, and oddly enough, it didn't matter. He liked it that he bothered her as much as she bothered him.
Corrie drew in a deep breath and held it for a moment then she exhaled. "I don't know whether you're dreaming it up, making it up, or you're just plain delirious," she answered slowly. "But so help me, I believe you believe you saw it, Ben Chastain. It would have made me perfectly happy if you had proved there were no ghosts, but now that you think you've seen something, I guess we'll have to see it through."
She looked up at him, her eyes bright with excitement. "Well, Mr. Ghost hunter, what do we do next?"
Ben drew in a long breath, filling his lungs with reviving air. "I guess I take my bags back upstairs and finish my stay as planned. I have lots of work to do over the next few days." He reached for the door handle then stopped and glanced over his shoulder. Trying to gauge her reaction, he studied Corrie's face. "Is that okay with you?"
Chapter Four
Corrie stumbled into the kitchen, her head throbbing, her eyes filled with sand. Not a morning person on the best of days, she was finding this day had been harder than usual. For two reasons that she could discern, she'd hardly slept a wink. Number one was that today was the first time she'd absolutely, positively had to get up to greet a guest. More likely, the second reason for her lack of sleep was the time she'd spent thinking too much about Ben and that incredible, passionate, frightening kiss. That and Ben's retro-whatever vision.
She rubbed her gritty eyes and yawned. "Please tell me you made some real coffee instead of that fruit-flavored stuff you drink," Corrie mumbled as she shuffled toward the coffee pot.
Vanessa shook her head and motioned for Corrie to sit down. "Um, um, um. Looks like somebody got up on the wrong side of the bed." She nodded toward the coffee maker. "It's high test. I didn't see much sense filling the twenty cup urn when we only have one guest."
Corrie groaned, then wished she hadn't. Vanessa's radar was sure to come up if she wasn't careful about what she said and how she said it. At least she hadn't muttered anything incriminating. Yet.
"All right, girlfriend. What's going on? I know you hate getting up before noon, but you usually manage to be civil." Vanessa filled a mug with coffee and placed it on the butcher block in front of Corrie.
Sighing, Corrie wondered where to begin. If she lied, Vanessa would know. Maybe she could… she could tell Vanessa all about Ben's farfetched story and her friend would never get around to asking if anything else had happened. "Our friend, the ghost-hunting doctor, thinks he has evidence that there are supernatural elements here."
Vanessa arched a brow. "Do tell? Did one jump out at him and holler 'boo'?" She raised her hands to the side of her face and wiggled her fingers.
"I wish. That I could deal with. I think." Corrie took a sip of coffee, hot and strong, and waited for the jolt of caffeine to jump start her heart. "He almost scared me to death last night."
Vanessa sipped her own coffee. "Oh?" she asked from over the rim of her mug. "How?"
"I came out of the kitchen after cleaning up my supper mess and found him kneeling in the front doorway." That much was true and didn't really sound all that awful.
"Was he doing some sort of psychic termite inspection?" Vanessa took another swig of coffee.
"No. Not like that at all." Corrie shook her head, both in denial and in an attempt to clear more of the fog out of her cloudy brain. "It was more like he had collapsed."
"Uh oh. There go our insurance rates." Vanessa's irises shifted upward.
"Oh, he was all right. At least, physically. Just sorta dazed, like he couldn't believe what he'd seen." Corrie drew in a deep breath. "If I had seen it, I guess I'd have been out of it too."
"I take it you didn't see anything."
"No. I never even heard of such a thing.
" Corrie paused, wondering how she could phrase it without sounding as insane as Ben had last night. "He said he looked out the front door and saw 1903." There. Might as well just blurt it out.
Vanessa swallowed her coffee too quickly, strangling on the hot brew. "Come again," she spluttered.
"I know it sounds weird, but he described the house and grounds as they must have looked in 1903."
"And you bought that hogwash? Girl, he could have researched everything at the library before he showed up. For all you know, he's manufacturing the whole thing just for his book. What do you know about the man?"
Corrie put her mug down and stared into the dark liquid at the bottom. How could she tell her friend that she knew he loved antique flowers, and had piles of student loans that would be paid off if he turned out a book that sold well? And how could she tell her that Ben had kissed her senseless in this very room. And when she'd looked into his eyes after he'd told her what he'd seen, she'd believed.
So help her, she'd believed him.
"Enough," she answered finally. "If you had seen him, 'Nessa, you'd have believed him too."
"Well, I think you're as crazy as he is if you do. You got to have some concrete proof. Something you can put your hands on, touch, and feel."
Oh, she'd done some touching and feeling, all right, but that wasn't the kind Vanessa was talking about. "I know, Vanessa. And I think I can prove some of it." Remembering the painting that Ben had described, she pushed away from the butcher table and headed back toward her rooms. She had to get dressed before Ben Chastain appeared this morning. If she was lucky, he'd sleep in.
"How you gonna prove it, Corrie? Ghosts don't exactly leave footprints."
"Ben described a painting that I remember from when I was a kid. It hasn't been displayed for years. If I can find it, that would be a start."
****
Ben had gotten up with the sun and the sound of birds twittering on the iron railing outside his room. He had been ready and eager to continue with his psychic investigation, but after consulting his watch, realized that it was too early to disturb Corrie. The dining room didn't even open for breakfast until seven. So he'd lain in bed and mapped out his strategy until he'd heard the crunch of tires on the shelled drive signaling that someone had arrived. Then he'd hurried down the hall to take a quick shower.
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