Dana, her eyes suspiciously bright, could only nod, her eyes never leaving Jack's face.
"Of, course, that wasn't even the first trip the two of them had made to the emergency room. Mr. Hudson, I know you said Rose was great in a crisis, but you should've seen my sister. Jack was outside cutting some boards with a power saw and somehow almost cut his hand off." He demonstrated with a short chopping motion across his left palm. At Josie's gasp, he amended, "Well, maybe not almost off, but he cut it pretty bad. Dana heard him yell, asked him what was wrong and he told her he needed to get to the hospital. Do you know what she said? 'Let me get my shoes'."
He shook his head in wonder. "Blood everywhere,”he added with youthful relish, "and she's calm as a cucumber. She wraps his hand in a towel and we all drive down to the hospital. She never left his side until they had him all stitched up and the doctor convinced her to go get some coffee. That's where I found her, sitting in a corner and shaking like a leaf in a thunderstorm."
Noah leaned back in his chair, looking first at Dana and then at Jack, who only looked at each other. He leaned toward Josie and whispered. "Well, they're at least looking at each other again. And they are smiling. That's good, right?"
Josie smiled happily. "That's very good." She whispered back. "Now comes Phase Two." Aloud she said, "Uncle Oscar, can we do karaoke tonight?"
Oscar, who had watched and listened to Noah's performance silently winked at his niece, but merely said, "Well, I hadn't planned to do that tonight, but I don't see why not. If everyone is finished with dinner, why don't we all go out to the courtyard?"
Everyone got up from the table and filed out of the dining room. Jack moved up behind Dana and without looking at her, bumped her with his shoulder. Dana smiled to herself. This was an old game, dating back to when they first met at the age of twelve. She bumped him back. He bumped her again with a little more force. She bumped him back. Changing the rules of the game a bit, Jack hooked Dana under her knees, threw her over his shoulder and carried her out of the room laughing helplessly. Noah, who had been watching their byplay with much interest, grinned as they approached him.
"Smart aleck,”she muttered as Jack carried her past Noah.
The courtyard was set up exactly as it had been the night before, the only exception being the lack of a live band. Jack deposited her on her feet, tweaked her nose affectionately and then headed over to check out the karaoke machine Oscar was setting up. With a small frown Dana realized that he still had not spoken a word to her since he'd left her room this afternoon.
Grace was practically bouncing on her toes from excitement. "I just love to sing!"
Rose looked heavenward in a give-me-strength expression. "We know, Grace, but why don't you give some of the others a chance?"
"Hey, Mr. Hudson!" yelled Noah, who along with Josie, had muscled out Oscar and Jack for control of the karaoke machine, "I bet you know this one." He popped in a disk and Henry laughed uproariously as he heard the distinctive first few bars of a familiar song.
"You bet I do, boy, I'm not as old as you think." He took Rose by the arm, much as she had his arm the night before, and said, "Come on, R, I dare you!" Giving no reaction to the shortening of her name, Rose good-naturedly allowed herself to be pulled forward. Dana thought Noah's grin would split his face when he gave each of them a microphone and they began. What they lacked in skill they more than made up for in enthusiasm.
Dana tried to avoid karaoke machines as much as possible, so she fished a soda out of the ice-filled washtub, and sat down next to Mark, who looked as if he couldn't understand why the adults were getting so excited over what amounted to a high tech music box. He was studying his grandfather as if he was a strange creature he had just been given to dissect. With a grin, Dana jerked her head towards the pair. "I guess he likes to do more than just dance, huh?"
"I reckon." Mark smiled at her shyly. "I didn't get a chance to tell you earlier, but I'm glad you're al right, Dana."
"Thank you. I'm glad I am, too."
"You and Jack aren't still mad anymore, are you?"
Dana sighed. Does everyone know about it? "No, we're not mad anymore."
"Then how come he's sitting over there and you're sitting over here?"
Dana had been wondering the same thing. After losing interest in the karaoke machine, Jack had settled in a chair out of the way from everyone else. He was looking more cheerful than he had a dinner, much more like his old self, yet he was still keeping himself distant. Henry and Rose had finished their song and Grace was giving her all.
"We must be the non-singers in the group." Oscar joined them, pulling up a chair. Grace hit a high note. "Or at least the only ones willing to admit it,”he said wincing. Oscar studied Dana for a moment, still watching Jack with a puzzled frown. "I gather things between you two have become complicated." Dana looked at him. "Not that it's any of my business."
Dana sighed again. She seemed to be doing a lot of that lately. "I guess complicated is as good a word as any. To be honest I'm scared to death. I'm afraid of what might happen if things change."
"All things change. Everything must grow and change or they die. Everything: plants, people, and relationships. You said you are afraid of what might happen if things change. Haven't they changed already?"
He was right. The genie was out of the bottle and there was no putting him back in again.
"My guess is,”Oscar observed, "that you fear losing him if you push beyond the limits of the friendship you have enjoyed for so long. Maybe you should ask yourself if it's possible you'll lose him if you don't."
Dana felt a cold knot settle in her stomach at his words. She hadn't thought of that. Briefly, she tried to imagine her life without Jack's almost constant presence and was unable to. In her imagination, all she could see was a big black hole where he used to be.
Noah had thought everything was back to normal when they had started goofing around in the dining room, but now he was confused that Dana and Jack were still sitting at opposite sides of the courtyard. Flipping through the disks hurriedly, he found a song that was a special favorite of theirs. After a whispered conference with Josie, he inserted it into the machine and they began to sing.
She knew he could feel her watching him. She waited until finally he looked at her, a long solemn considering look, his whole heart there in his eyes for her to see if she wanted to. Dana's own heart pounded painfully in her chest. He was waiting for her to make the next move, she realized. He had laid his cards on the table earlier when he had kissed her with such raw passion. He had taken his risk. Now he was waiting for her to take one, too.
Jack watched her walk toward him. Every muscle in his body was tense. He couldn't read her expression. He couldn't read her intent. He had chosen to be patient, something he was well practiced at. He had begun to hope this weekend that his patience was beginning to pay off.
Yesterday he realized that she was becoming more aware of him as a man rather than just‘good old Jack’. He'd had every intention to use that awareness to coax her, to entice her, to seduce her, to try and bring her closer to feeling for him what he felt for her. But he had let his fear-fueled temper get the best of him. He had taken such a gamble today. Was he about to lose?
"Do you want to dance?" Dana asked Jack.
At the look in her eyes, Jack felt such a surge of relief pass through him that it seemed his muscles had turned to jelly. Dana reached for his hand, tugged him up out of his chair and led him to the dance floor. They went into each other’s arms like they had a thousand times before. But this time it felt brand new.
Noah and Josie slapped their hands together in a low five and continued their song.
"I guess he thinks he's pretty clever,”Jack said.
"Actually,”Dana murmured, sliding her hand up his chest to bury her fingers in the hair at the back of his neck, "I think he's pretty clever myself."
The light in her eyes, the playfulness in her tone, warmed him in a way nothing had in years
. He felt it all the way to the soles of his boots. "You do, huh?"
"Yes."
Jack looked into her eyes seriously, all teasing set aside for the moment. "D, I know you're scared. I'm scared, too. But I'd rather be scared with you than without you."
"Jack?"
"Yeah?"
"Shut-up and kiss me."
"Yes, ma'am."
This kiss was gentler than the last, but no less powerful. Dana felt it speak promises to her soul. Promises of what she didn't know. But as she put her arms around his neck and pulled him closer, she found herself desperate to find out.
"Hey!"
Dana and Jack jumped away from each other guiltily but Noah was no longer watching them. Instead he was racing towards the back of the castle. "I just saw someone run past!" He stopped at the corner of the courtyard and peered around it. He saw nothing but the old water well.
"It was Just Cedric!" Grace ran to join him, looking around to see if she could catch a glimpse as well. "Oh, Noah, you saw him, too."
Rose snorted in disbelief and smirked at Oscar. "Come on, fess up. You hired someone to run around the castle at night, didn't you?"
Oscar merely cocked an eyebrow. "Did I?"
Rose huffed. "I hate it when he does that."
Chapter 7
Dana couldn't get to sleep that night.
The party had broken up about an hour before midnight. Dana and Jack had spent most of the time dancing, which actually amounted to little more than holding each other and swaying to the music. They had walked hand and hand up the stairs. Jack kissed her at the door of her bedroom until even her body vibrated. Then he left her to go to his own room. So now she couldn't sleep, feeling very confused and out-of-sorts.
What had she thought was going to happen? Had she really wanted Jack to stay with her tonight? While her hormones were screaming, "Yes! Yes!" the rest of her wasn't so sure. Sex had always been a major step for her. The notion of sex with Jack simply boggled her mind. For a moment she tried to imagine what it would be like, but quickly gave it up as a bad idea. She didn't want to have to explain to anyone in the morning why she had been taking a cold shower in the middle of the night.
Most of the people they knew had never understood their friendship. Many believed they were already lovers and simply smiled knowingly when she insisted that they were just friends. Looking at their relationship objectively, she could easily see why people thought the way they did. Dana and Jack had shared so much of their lives with each other for so long, the joys and the sorrows, the laughter and the tears, the good times and the bad.
They knew each other so well, that on many occasions their level of communication seemed to border on the psychic. There was an emotional closeness between them that many of their married friends didn't share. And they had a comfortable, albeit non-sexual physical intimacy that seemed to be rare in male-female friendships. So was the prospect of sexual intimacy really that big of a step, after all?
At the soft knocking on the door, Dana practically jumped out of her skin. Jeeper’s creepers! She used one of Jack's favorite expressions. Was it possible he really could read her mind? She opened the door and cautiously peeked out. The powerful sense of disappointment she felt when she saw it was Rose and not Jack, told her all she needed to know. Her hormones and the rest of her were now in perfect accord.
Rose put her finger to lips then gestured for her to follow. Puzzled by her sense of urgency, Dana didn't even bother searching for her robe. Rose was tiptoeing down the hall that led to the upstairs music room. Dana had not had occasion to go into this room yet. Despite the Hollywood stereotype that would have audiences believe that all castles had a grand ballroom where lavish parties were held, Dana had learned that grand ballrooms were rare. However, most did boast a formal music room, where recitals and smaller dances and balls could be held.
Rose was leading her towards just such a room. She could now see that Grace was waiting for them, hovering just outside the door.
"Wait until you get a load of this," Rose whispered in her ear.
Grace's eyes were wide and fearful and her face seemed much paler than it should have been even in the moonlight. She was wringing her hands in agitation. As Dana came closer, she clutched her arm frantically. The strength of her grip and the trembling in her hand surprised her. In a tone that raised goose bumps on her arms, Grace whispered a single word. "Voodoo." She then pointed a shaky finger into the music room.
On the left side of the room was a marble fireplace mounted by a handsomely carved mantel made out of some kind of bone-colored wood. But it wasn't the fireplace that had grabbed their attention, but the figure in front of it glowing in a ghostly light. It was a very large, very purple chicken wearing a top hat and doing some kind of a dance.
Dana couldn't help herself. Peels of laughter filled the hallway, causing doors to open and lights to click on. The apparition at the fireplace flickered and winked out. Jack had once said that full-bodied laughter from Dana was a force of nature that could wake the dead. Or in this case make it disappear.
Grace was clearly terrified. "Oh, don't laugh!" Grace said. Jack came running down the hall with Noah on his heels. "Jack, make her stop."
"What's going on, what happened?" Jack asked.
"It's voodoo," Grace whispered.
Dana wiped tears from her eyes. "I'm sorry,”she began, trying to stop her giggling, "but what makes you say it's voodoo?"
"We learned all about it in New Orleans. At the museum they said that voodoo poltergeists appear as purple roosters in top hats. Or sometimes it could be a snake in a polka-dotted bow tie." Fresh laughter erupted from Dana and she fell against the wall.
"Yeah,”Rose added dryly, who clearly had not taken this whole scenario as seriously as her companion, "they even told us that Dr. John the famous New Orleans voodoo practitioner from the last century comes back from time to time as an alligator dressed in black wearing a ruffled shirt."
Dana leaned up against the wall. "Please stop,”she gasped, her whole body shaking from with mirth. "Stop I can't breathe."
By this time Oscar has joined them, looked very peeved and disgruntled. "What is all this racket? What's going on out here?"
Dana leaning weakly against the wall looked back into the music room. With tears streaming down her face she replied, "I think it was an Irish jig. Or maybe even the Electric Boogaloo." More shouts of glee exploded around them and she began beating her heels against the floor.
With a shake of his head, Jack scooped her up off the floor and held her in his arms. She buried her face in his neck and giggled helplessly. Everyone looked at Jack who simply smiled and said nothing. Then they all looked at Noah. He shrugged. "Sometimes things strike her as funny."
Since Dana was clearly unable to and Grace was practically in a panic regarding this insult against the spirit world, Rose explained the past several minutes, eliciting fresh bursts of muffled giggles.
Rose looked at Oscar speculatively. "I know you advertised this castle as being haunted-"
"I did not arrange this." He was outraged at the very suggestion. "I tell stories and let the guests make up their own minds. I do not fake ghosts just so I can advertise my castle as haunted."
"I believe you." Dana seemed to have herself more or less under control although the twinkling in her eyes told them it was near thing. However, she seemed disinclined to give up her place in Jack's arms. He seemed disinclined to let her. "I don't think dancing chickens…”she paused to bite her lip before continuing, "…is exactly your style. Besides, you've never said a word about voodoo."
"And nor would I. Voodoo has a sinister connotation to most people. While some tourists may think it is thrilling to shop at a voodoo supply store, those same people might not want to sleep in a castle that was haunted by voodoo spirits. And to the best of my knowledge, there is no history of voodoo associated with this castle."
"Well, if not you, then who?" Rose demanded. "Somebody must be doing it." She
looked around. "Not all of us are here,”she said, noticing that Mark, Henry, Brett, Austin and Josie had not left their rooms. "Don't you think that's suspicious?"
"Well, it is after 1a.m." Dana grinned. "And while I may be loud, I've seen some people sleep through anything."
"Let's not get carried away and start pointing fingers just yet," Oscar warned. "I must admit that it makes more sense that I would be behind this stunt than any of you. I know it's not me, but why should it be any of you? You were all mostly strangers to each other before you arrived here."
"These stunts,”Noah murmured thoughtfully.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, if you count what happened to Dana and Josie in the stairwell, this is the second time."
Dana hopped out of Jack's arms. "You mean somebody is deliberately trying to scare us?"
Oscar shook his head. "Perhaps it seems that way, but that makes no sense. Who would be doing it? Why?"
Grace patted out a huge yawn, apparently recovered from her fright. "Well, I still say its real ghosts. If it isn't Oscar and it isn't any of us, then who's left?"
Noah grinned. "Just Cedric?"
Grace brightened. "Exactly." Another yawn. "I'm going back to bed. I need my beauty sleep."
Rose shrugged. "What the hell. Nothing's getting settled this way."
Everyone headed back to his or her own rooms. Once Dana reached her bedroom door, she tugged Jack to a stop. "Jack stick around for a minute. I want to talk to you about something. Go on in, I'll be right back." Fighting back his own yawn, Jack nodded and went into her room to wait. Dana followed Noah to his room, catching him just as he reached his door. "Hey. Um, I just want to tell you…well, don't wait up for Jack. He won't be coming back tonight."
Noah looked at her a moment uncomprehending. Then his eyes widened. "Oh, boy!"
"Shush! Goodnight, Noah." She kissed her brother's cheek, her eyes glowing with excitement and headed back to her room.
Jack was sitting on her bed, leaning sleepily against one of the posts at the foot. Dana closed the door and sat down next to him. They simply looked at each other, neither saying anything. Jack broke the silence first. "What did you want to talk about?"
Searching For Treasure Page 7
