by JoAnn Ross
18
Nate was going out of his mind. Five cities in as many days, and as much as he enjoyed meeting his readers, he was already beginning to lose track of which city he was in. Coincidentally, a movie based on one of his books was playing on a local channel, but about fifteen minutes of the butchered novel was about all he could take.
He picked up his phone and punched in the number it had taken all his self-control to avoid calling during the past five days.
“If you’re going to tell another ghost story, I’m not going to listen,” she said without bothering with any pleasantries. Tess knew it was all his fault that the rakish Captain MacGrath had been showing up in her dreams, looking remarkably, disturbingly like Nate Breslin.
When she hadn’t heard from him after their dinner at her house, Tess had decided that he had returned to Shelter Bay and put her out of his mind. For five very long days and nights, she’d been telling herself that was exactly what she wanted. Too bad she couldn’t make herself believe it.
“Are you calling for any special reason?”
“I was lonely.”
“What’s the matter? Did the captain float off somewhere into the void and leave you all alone in that big old house?”
“You know about my house?”
“I saw pictures of it in an old People magazine at the hair-dresser’s. It’s beautiful.”
“Did the article happen to mention it was built by the captain?”
“You’re making that up.”
“It’s the God’s honest truth. I know you aren’t ready to believe this, but I think the reason he’s still sticking around is Isabella.”
“You’re right. I doubt I’ll ever be ready to accept that idea. But it makes a good story. And speaking of stories, I’m in the middle of Dragons’ Lair.”
“You bought one of my books?”
The obvious pleasure in his voice disconcerted her. “I ran out of something new to read, and when I turned on my Kindle, there it was, advertised on the front page.”
And hadn’t that seemed like unwanted fate? Tess had thought at the time. Or maybe more that the giant company’s algorithm had taken notice of her search for his titles. “So I decided to give it a try.”
Tess had assured herself that it was only curiosity about a man who could actually believe in ghosts that made her go looking online in the first place. That’s all it was, she had insisted when she’d clicked to download. Curiosity. That’s all she would allow it to be.
“What do you think of it so far?” he asked.
What did she think? That reading the novel was like being led across a minefield by a raving lunatic. “I just finished the scene in the graveyard. The one with all the rats.”
“That’s one of my favorite scenes.” Tess could hear the satisfaction in his voice and knew he was smiling. “I’ve always thought horror stories are at their best when they’re big and gaudy.”
“You wrote that particular scene solely to shock.”
“Absolutely.”
Tess was surprised when he didn’t argue by attributing some theoretical artistic merit to the scene. “I thought you were going to claim some deep, important symbolism,” she admitted.
He laughed. “Hey, if you look for some hidden meaning in that book, you’re going to be very disappointed, Tess. It was merely a story meant to entertain. Nothing more.”
“It certainly does that,” she admitted.
“I’m glad you’re enjoying it.”
“I didn’t say that exactly. To tell you the truth, Nate, I’ve already gotten up twice tonight just to make certain my doors are locked.” Unable to mesh the man who’d brought her étouffée and made her laugh with the horror writer whose mind was so filled with darkness, she asked the question she’d been wondering. “How can you go through life looking at things through such a gloomy cloud?”
“Hey,” he objected quickly, “you’re underestimating me. Didn’t I tell you that writers, especially horror writers, are the best sort of optimists?”
“After reading Dragons’ Lair, I’m having difficulty believing that.”
“Think of it this way: Every time I begin a new book, I’m optimistic enough to think that I can make you a child again. I’m promising to make you believe in vampires, ghouls, haunted houses—at least while you’re turning the pages.”
“If that’s your goal, then you’ve succeeded admirably. But I’m not certain that I should thank you for it. I’ll probably have nightmares.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. The dark is a fertile ground for our most primordial fears. Perhaps you just need someone to hold your hand until it’s morning again.”
There was a significant pause. Nate held his breath, afraid he’d pushed his luck too far.
“Perhaps I do,” Tess said at last.
Just when he felt her softening, just when he thought that they might be able to have a conversation free of the sparring that had defined their relationship up until now, there was a knock at the door. Nate forced down the surge of frustration.
“Just a minute,” he called out. “Tess, can you hold on for just a minute? There’s someone at the door.”
“Really, Nate,” she protested, “I have a great deal of work to do this evening.”
“Just one minute,” he promised.
“One minute.”
A moment later, he was back. “Hi again.”
“At least you’re not lonely any longer.”
Her frosty tone had returned. In spades. Nate wondered what he could have done wrong now.
“I’m feeling a lot better; talking to you helps a lot. The room service waiter is nice enough but not much of a conversationalist.”
“Room service? You’re in a hotel?”
“In Omaha. Didn’t you get my message?”
It was Tess’s turn to sound confused. “Message?”
“Damn. I knew I should’ve called. Or at least texted. Instead, I dropped by your office on the way to the airport five days ago and left my itinerary with your receptionist. You were in court,” he continued, “or I would have given it to you in person. Just in case you found yourself with a few minutes to spare and felt like talking to a lonely horror novelist.”
“Carrie, the receptionist, has been out all week with the flu. You must have come by the day she left work early. What itinerary?”
“The one for the book tour my publisher has me on to promote Blood Brothers in hopes of boosting pre-orders for Christmas sales.”
“How horrible for you, having to jet-set around the country, appear on talk shows, and put up with the hoards of readers who line up in bookstores to gush about your brilliance.”
“That gushing part is pretty cool,” he admitted. “But I think I’ve picked up a different cold in each of the cities I’ve visited and am in danger of becoming addicted to nasal spray.”
“Surely a man of your vast imagination could find a more jet-set addiction than nasal spray.”
The hint of barely suppressed amusement in her voice was an indication she was beginning to relax. Which, in turn, meant that he was finally getting through to her.
“I suppose I would be on the bottom of the social ladder at Betty Ford.”
“Right behind the hotshot television star who sniffs glue in his dressing room.” Nate decided she was definitely loosening up when she allowed her laughter to bubble free.
He smiled in response to the silvery sound. “I hate to risk breaking the spell, but have you by any chance noticed that we’ve been getting along for at least ten minutes?”
Tess hesitated for a second. “We have,” she admitted, sounding surprised. “But in case you’ve met too many women in the last five days to remember, we managed to have a pleasant enough conversation over dinner at my house.”
“I haven’t forgotten a thing,” he said. “Including the fact that I’m still kicking myself for not kissing you good-bye. If the plane goes down before I get back to Oregon, when my life’s flashing before my
eyes, my main regret will be not having taken advantage of the moment before I left town.”
“Says the man who gets paid to write words for a living. Next you’ll be telling me we’ll always have Portland.”
“Which admittedly isn’t exactly Paris. But I swear it’s the truth. Would I be pushing my luck if I asked you out to dinner again when I get back?”
This time the hesitation was longer. “I’m not sure that would be a very good idea.”
“Why not? You can pick the place.”
“My caseload doesn’t allow any time for a relationship.”
At least she was admitting there might be a chance of one. He was definitely making progress. Reminding himself there was not a helluva lot he could do to change her mind while he was stuck in a hotel room halfway across the country, Nate didn’t push.
“You don’t have to worry about me taking up too much of your time. I’m a low-maintenance guy,” he assured her. “Meanwhile, how about you just think about it? I’ll call you tomorrow night from Minneapolis.”
“Really, that isn’t—”
“Tomorrow night,” he repeated. “Good night, Tess. Sweet dreams.”
As he pressed down the button to disconnect the call, Nate was grinning.
19
She was going to lose the Kagan case, Tess thought immediately upon waking. An hour later, as the day was turning into one of her all-time worst, the unpalatable idea of losing a case on which she had worked day and night became more firmly entrenched.
She’d had another threatening call shortly after midnight, which had left her unable to get back to sleep. Nate had been right about the dark, she had realized as she’d turned on every light in her house. It did seem to provide fertile ground for her imagination to create all sorts of forbidden horrors. Enough that she had another nightmare about her kidnapping, which always left her frustrated and tense because there were so many gaps.
Though, she’d noticed, less lately, for some reason, as foggy details began to fill in. The doctors had told her that it was always possible for her memory to eventually return. Not likely. But possible. Especially if she were to experience a trigger, though except for Nate Breslin’s horror stories, she couldn’t figure out what that might be.
If the fogginess from lack of sleep wasn’t enough, the morning got worse.
The heavy rain that had blown in from the coast had her hair so big and curly she looked like Elsa Lanchester in the Bride of Frankenstein, and just as she was about to leave the house, she spilled coffee on her brand-new winter-white suit, proving that she should never have succumbed to impulse and bought the damn thing in the first place.
For five years Tess had successfully stuck with proper gray business suits that were as practical as they were subdued. And incredibly boring, an impish little voice in the back of her mind had pointed out yesterday on her lunch hour when she’d passed Nordstrom’s window and seen the suit on display.
Drawn inside, she’d tried it on, and viewing her reflection in the dressing-room mirror, she hadn’t been able to help noticing that she looked decidedly softer, more feminine. Tess knew lawyers who used their femininity as yet another trial tool in the courtroom. She’d never been one of them.
Assuring herself that Nate Breslin—who’d kept his promise and called her from Minneapolis, then every other stop on his book tour—had nothing to do with her noticing the suit, knowing that she’d been behaving totally out of character, Tess had whipped out her credit card before she could change her mind.
After changing back into one of her boring charcoal suits, that she should have just stuck with in the first place, she’d left her townhouse, only to find that during the night her front tire had gone flat. Leaving an extra car key with her nosy, but friendly neighbor Mrs. Kael, who readily agreed to give it to the man from the auto club Tess had called to come change the tire, she took a cab to work.
“Something exciting came for you this morning,” Alexis greeted Tess as she entered the women’s lounge just down the hall from their desks.
Tess dampened a paper towel and sponged at the clinging mud her cab had splashed onto her skirt as it had peeled away after dropping her off at the courthouse. “With the way my luck is going this morning, it’ll probably be a subpoena,” she muttered.
“Subpoenas don’t come in such expensive-looking envelopes,” Alexis countered. “And certainly not bearing the governor’s return address.”
Tess lifted her head. “Why would the governor send me anything?”
She scowled down at her skirt. She’d gotten most of the mud off, but it still had wet blotches. “He’s probably hitting everyone up to help pay off his reelection campaign bills.”
“I don’t think so. It was hand delivered by a messenger service. I signed for it since you hadn’t come in yet.”
“My car had a flat. I had to call the motor club send someone to fix it.” Tess scrubbed viciously at one of the larger spots. “Seriously? It was hand delivered?”
“It was. And if you don’t stop fussing with that damn skirt and hurry up and open it, I’m going to die of curiosity.”
Tess tossed the paper towel into the wastebin. “It’s not going to get any better, anyway,” she said with a deep sigh. “Let’s check out this mysterious letter.”
Tess ran her fingernail under the flap of the envelope. Skimming the lines of bold script, she burst out laughing.
“I don’t believe this,” she said. First ghosts, now this. “You should’ve warned me Breslin’s crazy.” She handed the piece of heavy, watermarked linen paper to Alexis.
Alexis’s eyes widened as she read the brief note. “I love it!” she said on a rich laugh. “And it’s so Nate. How many men would have the governor write them a letter of recommendation in order to convince a woman to go out with them?”
“Only one that I know of.”
Alexis eyed her interestedly. “So are you going to give in?”
“I told him I don’t have time for a personal life right now.”
As she returned to the office, Tess wished that Alexis had put her question some other way. Give in. Surrender control. Weren’t they the same thing?
“We begin selecting the jury for the Schiff trial this morning.” Seeking something, anything, to do, she began straightening the few items on her desk.
Both women knew the sudden display of tidiness was unnecessary. The crystal paperweight, the only touch of femininity Tess permitted herself in the office, was exactly where it always was, three inches to the left of the leather-bound appointment book. The gold pen-and-pencil set was in its assigned place six inches from the front edge of her desk, memo pad and paper clip container right beside it. At the far left-hand corner of the immaculate desk were leather file boxes containing pristine folders.
The case files were color-coded according to the type of offense, the folders were never dog-eared, and Tess would die before allowing them to pile up in miniature pyramids on the floor around her desk, as was the habit of so many others working in the overcrowded office.
Alexis’s expression said that although she wasn’t buying a word of Tess’s flimsy excuse, she was willing to drop the subject. For the time being. “Well, whatever you decide to do about Nate, good luck this morning. And good luck with the Kagan jury.”
Tess grimaced. “I think that one is a lost cause. They’ve been out too long.”
“The second jury convicted the son,” Alexis reminded her. “And a lengthy deliberation doesn’t always mean acquittal.”
“It does when the case is so cut-and-dried,” Tess complained. “Damn, but I hate to lose that one!”
“You haven’t lost it yet,” Alexis reminded her calmly.
“Yes, I have. That woman’s going to walk. I can feel it in my bones.”
“Feeling a bit fanciful this morning, aren’t we? That’s what you get for hanging around with a writer, I suppose.”
“I haven’t been hanging around with him. We had lunch. That’s all.
And one dinner, over a week ago.”
“You didn’t mention that.”
“Because it didn’t count. He dropped by with some étouffée and bread pudding at a time when all I had in the kitchen were some eggs I was going to scramble.”
“From Acadia? I love their jambalaya, and Matt is almost orgasmic over the blackened catfish.”
“No. This was from Bon Temps.”
“The man brought you dinner all the way from Shelter Bay?”
“Well, it is where he lives.”
“It’s also not exactly around the corner,” Alexis pointed out. “Have you seen him since?”
“That’d be a bit difficult since he’s in the middle of a book tour. He was in Detroit last night and Chicago the night before that.”
“How interesting that you know his itinerary when you’re not at all interested in him.”
When her friend’s eyes began to brighten with that avid matchmaker’s gleam, Tess knew it was time to leave.
“I’m due in court,” she said, beating a hasty retreat before she ended up admitting she’d been thinking of Nate Breslin far too often for her own good these past days.
She’d just emerged from the stairwell when her phone rang. Normally, she’d ignore calls right before entering a courtroom, but the screen read the name of her AAA autoclub. Which couldn’t be a good thing.
“Ms. Lombardi?”
“Yes, I’m Tess Lombardi. Is something wrong?”
“This is Dan, from AAA. I just wanted to let you know that I changed the tire for you, no problem, but it wasn’t your typical flat.”
“It wasn’t?”
“No. Unfortunately, your tire was slashed. Normally, I’d recommend buying a whole new set, to keep the tread even, but your car’s new enough, you’ll be able to get away with one.”
“Well, I suppose that’s good news,” she said, even as she tried to wrap her mind around this news. “Thank you, Dan. I appreciate your help.”
“No problem, Ms. Lombardi. Have yourself a good day.”
Unfortunately, while she appreciated the sentiment, it was too late for that. Slashed? Admittedly Portland wasn’t as crime-free as Kara’s description of Shelter Bay, but still…
