by JoAnn Ross
“It’s encouraging to learn that my work shows up before that old kidnapping story.”
“It does. And it’s all good. Including an article that suggested you were considering running for congress.”
“Now that’s definitely fiction.”
“Too bad. The political system, which has become a horror story of its own, could use someone like you… And I’m betting you really don’t believe in ghosts.”
Tess took a soothing sip of ice water. What he was suggesting was not only ludicrous, it was impossible. She couldn’t help wondering if all those years of writing about monsters had affected the man’s mind.
“No, I don’t. And for the record, nor do I believe in vampires, sparkly or otherwise, werewolves, ghouls, or any other spooky things that go bump in the night.” Tess speared a piece of romaine topped with pomegranate seeds. “With such a vivid imagination, it’s no wonder your books sell so well.”
“That sketch isn’t a figment of my imagination. And believe me, Tess, neither is Captain MacGrath.”
Tess froze at the all-too-familiar name.
Busted. Nate had sensed there were hidden depths to Tess Lombardi. Angus MacGrath might be a clever old soul, but he couldn’t have captured Nate’s unwavering interest with just any woman.
“I suspect most people who’ve visited Shelter Bay have heard the name.” After taking another drink of ice water, she drew in a deep, calming breath. “Given that the wreck of the ship he was captaining is still rusting away on Castaway Cove.”
Every instinct Nate possessed told him that Tess knew more than she was telling, but before he could dig deeper, they ran out of time.
She put down her glass and stood up. “I’m due back in court to make my closing statement.”
Nate tossed some bills on the table. “Don’t worry, Counselor, I’ll get you back before the bailiff calls the court to order.”
The sun was shining through a break in the slate-gray clouds as they left the restaurant.
“We didn’t get to finish our conversation,” he said as they walked back to the courthouse. “Have dinner with me tonight.”
“So I can waste my time listening to you drag out this outrageous bit of fiction concerning the alleged ghost of a man who died a century ago?”
“I can see that your work would make you cynical,” Nate allowed. “And granted, it does sound like an outrageous story. But it’s not fiction.”
“I don’t know what game it is you’re playing here, Mr. Breslin—”
“It’s Nate,” he reminded her. “We shared a lunch, which you didn’t finish. And you can deny it until doomsday, but we’re also somehow personally connected through the captain. I’d say that allows you to call me by my first name.”
“I don’t want any connection with you, personal or otherwise.”
“Hey.” He held up both hands as they reached the steps of the courthouse. “I didn’t ask the guy to put you in my dreams, okay? I’m just trying to figure out why.”
“If he has done that—and I’m not admitting for a moment that I believe your crazy claim about his existence to be true—it’s not me who’s been appearing in your dreams.”
Nate’s right brow rose in an unmistakable sign of irritation. “I suppose you have a better explanation for that sketch? A drawing I did before I’d ever met you?”
“I can’t explain what possessed you to draw it in the first place,” Tess admitted reluctantly.
“Now we’re getting somewhere. So you’re willing to admit that some indefinable force is responsible?”
“No.” Tess shook her head. “As I said, I’ve no idea why you drew it. But whatever the reason, you’re way off base.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re the one with the vivid imagination,” she tossed back as she started up the stone steps of the courthouse. “You figure it out.”
Nate frowned, not wanting to let her get away quite yet but knowing he had no choice. How cooperative would Tess be if he made her late for court? Not very. In fact, considering how seriously she took her work, she’d probably never speak to him again.
But, dammit, he’d been right. She knew. Somehow, in some unfathomable way, he and Tess Lombardi were mysteriously linked. And the captain, as he had suspected all along, was the key.
Just as he was trying to figure out his next move, Tess appeared to take pity on him.
“The sketch is of my great-great-grandmother,” she informed him over her shoulder. “So if your dreams have honestly been haunted by a Lombardi, it’s Isabella, not me.”
As she turned away again, Nate watched her with a mixture of lingering irritation and masculine appreciation. She might act like the Marine drill sergeant he’d suffered under for all those weeks of basic training after he graduated from college, but Tess Lombardi had the best legs of any woman he’d ever met.
“You may think you’ve had the last word, Counselor,” he murmured. “But believe me, lady, we’ve only just begun.”
Nate was smiling as he left Portland and drove back to Shelter Bay. Tess might have been right when she’d suggested it was her ancestor who’d been playing a starring role in his dreams night after night.
But now that he’d met Isabella’s intriguing great-great-granddaughter, if the woman thought he was going to simply write the entire experience off as a case of mistaken identity, she wasn’t nearly as intelligent as he’d already determined her to be.
Oh, no. He and Tess Lombardi weren’t finished yet, Nate vowed.
Not by a long shot.
12
“Traitor.”
Alexis glanced up at Tess, her expression giving nothing away. “I heard things went well in court today. Congratulations.”
Tess leaned forward, resting her hands on the surface of her friend’s desk. “You conspired with Nate Breslin to trick me into lunch.”
“Ah. I take it he caught up with you?”
“He did,” Tess muttered.
“You don’t sound particularly pleased. You can’t tell me the food wasn’t great.”
“The food was excellent, as always. It was the company that left a great deal to be desired.”
Alexis began straightening the correspondence in her out basket. “That’s odd,” she murmured. “Nate is usually a fascinating conversationalist.”
“I suppose he might seem that way. To someone who finds ghouls and goblins fascinating.”
“Nate is a little bent,” Alexis admitted. “But I’ve always thought that was one of the most appealing things about him. It’s fascinating to watch him think his way around corners.” Picking up a rubber band, she put it away in a drawer. “Of course, his gorgeous gemstone-green bedroom eyes aren’t so bad, either.”
“What are you doing noticing his eyes? You’re engaged.”
“I’m engaged, not dead.” Her expression sobered. “You know, he’s very nice.”
“Oh, really?” Tess replied with feigned disinterest. “Personally, I found him tiring.” She shook her head. “Besides, his behavior could only be classified as bizarre. He actually spent the entire lunch telling me a ghost story.”
“I’ve always enjoyed Nate’s stories,” Alexis countered easily. She took a drink of coffee from the ever-present mug on her desk. “You know, there’s something to be said against being too choosy.”
“That’s easy for you to say. After all, you just happen to be engaged to one of the smartest, as well as nicest, men I’ve ever met. Not to mention him being super hot.”
“Matthew and Nate are the opposite sides of a very attractive coin,” Alexis agreed. “And I hadn’t realized you’d taken such notice of my fiancé’s attributes.” Alexis’s smile was calm and confident.
“I’m choosy, not dead.”
The women shared a laugh before returning to their work. After ten minutes, Tess looked up from the lengthy transcript of the Kagan case.
“Alexis?”
“Mmm?” The other woman was lost
in a law book, taking notes on a yellow legal pad.
“Do you… Well, have you ever… Oh, skip it,” she said as she twisted a paper clip into figure eights. “The entire thing’s absolutely ridiculous.”
Her atypical uneasiness had captured Alexis’s attention. “What’s ridiculous?”
Tess shook her head. “Never mind. It’s not important.”
Alexis put down her pen and waited.
“Do you believe in ghosts?” Tess asked.
Alexis took her time in answering. “No,” she said at length. “I don’t believe I do, although I can’t deny that I find the idea intriguing. Do you?” she asked. “Believe?”
“Of course not,” Tess insisted, not entirely truthfully as she tossed away the mangled paperclip. “Forget it. I’m sorry I brought it up.”
Alexis continued to observe her for another long moment. “Sure,” she said finally, returning to her research. “Consider it forgotten.”
Nate Breslin’s ludicrous story about a ghost living in his house had to be a fabrication. There wasn’t any ghost of Captain Angus MacGrath because ghosts didn’t exist. They couldn’t. The entire idea of some lost soul, trapped between his earthly existence and some ethereal paradise, was nothing but a fantasy created by novelists and screenwriters.
Tess told herself that over and over as she drove home at the end of the day. She reminded herself continually of the fact as she turned on every light in her townhouse before fixing a bowl of cereal for dinner.
“I don’t believe this,” she moaned later as she turned her television to the Classic Film Channel. She had intended to put Nate Breslin and his ridiculously tall tale out of her mind by losing herself in an old movie, only to discover that tonight’s offering was none other than The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.
“There are no such things as ghosts,” she said aloud, aiming the remote control at the television just as Rex Harrison, playing the spirit of an ancient seaman, appeared in the kitchen of Gull Cottage. The screen went dark. “They’re nothing more than fictional characters. Or figments of nervous minds,” she added as the wind coming off the river began to howl eerily down her chimney.
Settling down with a romance novel, Tess vowed to put both the annoying horror writer and his ghostly friend from her mind. But despite her best efforts, she still jumped when a shutter on an upstairs window suddenly banged.
“There are no such things as ghosts,” she repeated determinedly, picking up the book she’d dropped onto the rug. The flames of the gas fire she’d turned on to warm up a rainy night were creating tall, flickering shadows on the wall. “It’s ridiculous to even be thinking about one.”
As she struggled to ignore the wind’s lonely wail, Tess felt like a little girl whistling past a graveyard.
13
Tess woke the following morning with a splitting headache and the unsettling feeling that she’d spent the night in another dimension. She’d had a dream. A dream of her kidnapping so vivid that she’d awakened time after time unable to discern what was real and what was only the product of an overworked, over-stimulated subconscious.
She’d been in the dark. Curled up on a rough woolen blanket that scratched her skin and smelled like a wet dog. She’d lost track of the time and would have been unable to tell if it were day or night if it weren’t for the masked man occasionally bringing her food and water.
An Egg McMuffin was breakfast, which told her she’d survived another night. Chicken McNuggets were another marker, letting her know that a day had gone by and she was still alive.
But how many days? Time had blurred.
She’d heard the squeak of floorboards overhead. Seen a rectangle of light as the hidden doorway opened. Then identified the sound of heavy boots pounding down the stairs.
It was a familiar nightmare. One she’d had at least weekly into her teens, then it had, for several years, suddenly gone away. Until recently, when it had returned from where it had been lurking in the far, darkest reaches of her mind.
Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, she always woke up before discovering to whom those boots belonged. But because she knew the outcome of the story, she’d always believed it had been her dad and imagined him scooping her up into his strong arms and holding her against his chest, the way he must have held her when she was a baby.
Did she remember or imagine the tears streaming down her face?
And if they’d been real, had they been her father’s? Or hers? Or both?
Not doing anything to ease her unrelenting stress, she’d also received another threat from her anonymous caller sometime in the middle of the night. This time he’d accused her of putting an innocent man in prison and suggested that she watch her step very, very carefully.
Her head was still pounding when she reached the office, where she poured a paper cupful of water from the cooler and tossed down her third Advil of the morning.
“Rough night?” Alexis asked sympathetically, handing her a cup of black coffee and a chocolate-frosted donut from a box someone had brought in.
“Thanks,” Tess said. “I just had too much spinning around in my head to get much sleep.” Even as she vowed to run after work to avoid the donut attaching itself directly to her hips, no way could she resist the aroma of warm fried fat and chocolate.
“If you’d gone out to dinner with Nate, your night might have turned out a lot better.”
Despite her friend’s quasi-denial of matchmaking, Tess still believed that Alexis had hoped the lunch would lead to something else.
Like matching rings, picket fences, and strollers. None of which Tess was interested in. She wasn’t saying never. Just not now. And especially not with a man who was either delusional or a liar.
“Don’t tell me that Matt is so desperate for work that he’d try to marry Nate off just for the opportunity to update his will and write a prenup.”
“Did I mention anything about marriage? For the sake of our friendship, I’ll ignore the snark,” Alexis declared haughtily. “Besides, for your information, Matthew just happens to agree with me.”
“About what?”
“That, first of all, you are far too much of a workaholic who needs to get out more. When was the last time you took a long, romantic walk along the river? When did you stop to enjoy the feel of the breeze in your hair, the scent of flowers at the Japanese Gardens, a dazzling sunset—”
“I get the idea,” Tess broke in dryly. “I just can’t tell if you’re describing a shampoo commercial or one for a little blue erectile dysfunction pill. But while we’re on the topic of Matthew, what else does your paragon of a fiancé agree with you about?”
“We agree most of the time,” Alexis said. “Sometimes it’s almost boring how alike we are. But in this case, we both think that you and Nate would make an ideal couple.”
Tess sputtered out a laugh. “You’ve got to be kidding. The man and I are light-years apart. We have absolutely nothing in common.” Except, admittedly, their choice in restaurants. Which didn’t mean anything. After all, the reason for the restaurant’s longevity was that it was a favorite of lots of Portlanders. That didn’t mean she was destined to marry any of them.
There was also the fact that Breslin and she did, in a few degrees of separation way, have Captain MacGrath in common, Tess allowed. Enough that he’d somehow also infiltrated her dreams last night. But sometime during the predawn hours, she’d vowed to stop thinking about her errant, long-dead great-great-grandfather.
“Hey Tess.” Their conversation was interrupted by a tall, sandy-haired man sporting an unfortunate comb-over, who stopped by Tess’s desk on his way to the coffee bar. “I hear Vasilyev’s lawyer’s going after a federal habeas corpus ruling.”
Grigori “The Viper” Vasilyev was one of Tess’s more successful cases. Since it was also her first case when she’d joined the district attorney’s office, she’d been assigned to Jim Stevens, a veteran prosecutor. Although the Russian mobster had used the U.S. justice system for all it was w
orth, winning delay after delay, both Jim and Tess had remained adamant that the man should stand trial, and eventually he had, drawing a life-plus-twenty-year sentence for drugs, murder, conspiracy to commit murder, criminal assault, illegal gambling, and human trafficking.
After having lost his appeal on the judgment of conviction, and two years later another loss on a post-conviction appeal, his last-ditch attempt to claim that his constitutional rights had been violated in the Oregon court system because the infirmary hadn’t had a Russian-speaking doctor on staff when he’d suddenly come down with shortness of breath, rapid heartbeat, and chest pain (which had not proven to be a heart attack) didn’t surprise her.
“He’ll lose again. Just as he always does. Because he’s guilty as sin.”
And also because she had a witness willing to testify that not only was Vasilyev continuing to run his empire while in prison, he’d purposely injected himself with an overdose of anabolic steroids to cause the symptoms that would land him in the infirmary in the first place. Given that his English was as good as hers, Tess knew he’d gone through all that subterfuge in order to claim federal discrimination for anti-nationality reasons.
Granted, Vasilyev’s attorney would paint her informant to be a jailhouse snitch, which, indeed, he was. The low-level dealer to the prison gym rats was also hoping to cut a deal that would expunge infractions that had added more time to his sentence.
Adding yet another dark mark against him, he’d been the one who’d been selling the bulked-up Russian the illegal steroids in the first place.
But Tess had driven to the penitentiary in Salem herself, and while her work had admittedly made her cynical, she’d believed the informer who’d told her that The Viper was plotting yet another murder while inside those brick walls.
“Maybe so.” Bill Mitchell snagged a maple-glazed Long John from the bakery box. “But I sure as hell admire your guts. If I had your connections and mucho wine bucks, I’d blow this pop stand, buy myself my own tropical island, and live la dolce vita.”
