“I might know a place you can stay,” she continued. “While you take the time you need to decide what the future holds. It’s close enough to town to keep your parents happy, but far enough and quiet enough to give you the freedom to piece your thoughts together.”
“Where is this place?” he wondered.
“On the river,” she told him. “Fish River.”
“You live on Fish River,” he remembered.
“Along with a slew of other folks,” she pointed out. “The place is at the end of my road. There’s a catch, though. You’ll have to put up with a roommate.”
“I think we all know I’m no good at sharing,” he pointed out.
“Yes, but this is just temporary,” she said. “And your potential roomie is very into feng shui. No antiques, few breakables. Plus, she’s likely to stay out of your personal space.”
She rounded out the last words nicely. “Huh.” Gavin considered. “Is she hot?”
Mavis’s laugh was full-throated. When it didn’t end quickly this time, Gavin asked, “What’s funny?”
“You like a good joke, right?” she asked, wrapping her arms around herself and backtracking to the inn.
“Normally,” he replied. “Don’t leave me hanging on the punch line.”
“Her name is Zelda Townes.”
“And?”
“And you can find the rest out for yourself,” she tossed back, intriguing in all her unsolved mystery.
Gavin frowned at her back. “Is this because I can’t stop calling you Freckles?”
“No,” she said. “It’s because you won’t.”
CHAPTER TWO
PEOPLE NORMALLY PERFORMED hot yoga in a studio. Thanks to the heat and humidity July had to offer the Gulf Coast, Zelda Townes’s Bikram classes were held on the wide veranda of her old river house. The sun fell through the square slats of the pergola, fighting through a canopy of hanging ferns and fuchsia. If the screens didn’t keep the wolfish mosquitoes at bay, the plantings of lavender, mint and thyme would have made the pests turn tail.
Not only did Miss Zelda’s porch offer the perfect environment for hot yoga. It smelled like the inside of an apothecary. With the backdrop of the river and the grand weeping willow in the yard that spilled down to its fishy shores, achieving peace of mind wasn’t difficult here. The happy burble of shallow fountains, the hollow knock of bamboo chimes, and the light refrain of kirtan devotional music brought the morning class to its culmination.
Despite this and the stalwart nature of each of Miss Zelda’s advanced students, nearly all of them shrieked and fell out of their standing bow when a loud bang rent the quiet river air.
“What in the holy name of Babylon…?” Zelda scowled, her svelte spandex-clad form straightening from her mat. “That sounded like a Desert Eagle .50.”
Mavis felt the frisson of alarm go through her fellow classmates and injected a note of sardonic cool into the scene. “Yes, because Desert Eagles are a dime a dozen.” A chorus of barks reached her ears. “Damn it,” she said, already up. “That’s my dog.”
“Water’s still as molasses,” Zelda said, peering down the lawn to the river’s surface. “Go ’round back and see what’s doing. The rest of you, a few sips of water before we pick up on the last vinyāsa.”
Mavis wove her way through the sweaty bodies to the barn doors that led into Zelda’s sparse domain. The house had been built before hurricanes were named and outhouses had died. Zelda had done well to update the place. The water ran fine, just like the electric. Two large bathrooms had been added to the floor plan, with an additional powder room near the patio and sunrooms where Zelda held her classes, depending on the season.
The house had once been crammed wall-to-wall with furniture. Zelda’s parents and grandparents had been notorious hoarders. They’d run a down-home antiques business from there. Long before the business passed to her, Zelda announced she had no intention in furthering the enterprise. She’d cleaned house, burning most possessions before cheerfully planting the willow amid the ashes.
Longtime river residents still spoke about the great bonfire of ’76 and how it had lit up the night sky like the Second Coming. Of course, all this was decades before Mavis joined the river community. She’d grown to know the strange woman living in the old house at the end of the road, so much so that she and Zelda had started their own enterprise—Greater Baldwin Paranormal Research & Investigation. More commonly, they were known to locals by the tongue-in-cheek nickname the Paranormas.
The office to the right of the house’s entry point housed most of the ghost-hunting gear that Zelda and Mavis had carefully invested in. When Zelda wasn’t a yoga guru and Mavis wasn’t filling time cards at any of her parents’ small-town industries, they could both be found screening calls, dissecting claims of activity or out doing fieldwork in Zelda’s vintage red Alfa Romeo.
Mavis peered through the window to the right of the door. The pane of glass was old and waxy, but the distortion of smoke over the cracked drive and the fits of excited barking made her snatch the door wide. She looked right, then heard the cursing to her left and crossed the porch to get a better look.
“No, Prometheus!” someone said. “Back away! Down!”
Mavis broke into a run upon hearing her dog’s yelp. She opened her mouth to yell for him before she rounded the last car.
The smoke wafted from the hood of a familiar orange eighties-model Ford truck. The person shouting was Mavis’s friend and Gavin’s sister, Harmony Savitt. Which made the person on the ground underneath Mavis’s gigantic canine…
“Prometheus!” Mavis shouted, stumbling forward. “Get off of him! Get…” Her steps faltered at the sound of more yelps. They weren’t distressed. They were yipping. Happy. Walking sideways, tilting her head, she reevaluated the scene.
Gavin’s arms were up, the cords of his neck drawn into sharp contrast as he torqued his face away from the dog’s mouth. It was the dog’s tongue that was attacking him without mercy. The strained sound of high-pitched laughter fought through Gavin’s teeth.
Harmony had one leg over Prometheus’s back and was jerking on his silver-studded collar with all her might. “Oh my God! It’s like moving a planet!”
Prometheus got lucky with a tongue-lap across Gavin’s mouth. “Ah!” he grimaced. “Come on!”
“Prometheus,” Mavis said again, finding her feet. She joined the fray, grabbing the dog’s collar, too. She grunted, yanked. “Would you move your butt?”
Together, she and Harmony managed to tug Prometheus off the soldier. “Sit!” Mavis instructed, keeping hold of her dog as Harmony doubled over. Mavis crouched to Prometheus’s level, drawing his attention to her. “What were you thinking? You can’t just go knocking people over.” Shifting to her heels, she reached out to offer Gavin a hand, but he was already on his knees. She frowned at the Oakley sunglasses in his hand. “He broke them.”
“They fell off my head,” Gavin insisted. “I should’ve grabbed hold of ’em when I heard him coming.”
Harmony nodded agreement. “Those paws. They sound like a mammoth stampede.”
“I’m sorry,” Mavis said. “He usually doesn’t jump people like that.”
“You’re right,” Gavin said simply in return. “He definitely is a Prometheus.”
At his name, Prometheus strained forward, sniffing for Gavin’s hand. To Mavis’s surprise, Gavin obliged him, pressing his palm warmly against his flat-topped cranium and feeling his way to the dog’s ear. Prometheus’s lapping jowls closed quickly as he leaned into the caress and groaned, loudly, bending his head low. Mavis’s lips pressed together. She stared at Gavin over the length of Prometheus’s back.
Was that a smile? The scars stamped across his face didn’t interfere with the lines of his mouth, but it was a mouth that had grown far too accustomed to not smiling. Vague and hesitant, his eyes were
more than just the epic clash of bottle green and unfinished copper. Tapered at the corners, they held the same sad glint as an abandoned pet.
Her heart misfired. She frowned at him. The wounded Gavin. He held himself together, as always. However, the bruising was on the surface. She could see the stitching. She could see the steel cables and the double coat of duct tape holding him together. Yet still the damage was close.
She hated that she could read him. It was easy for her to read people. Exceptions were rare. With his cool exterior and easy charm, Gavin Savitt had nearly always been the exception. He’d split his time annoying her and—unintentionally perhaps—compelling her. However, for all his past, there weren’t too many people who had ever found Gavin uninteresting.
He’d always been far too good-looking and she knew he’d used it to his advantage. Not with her. Others. His fighting edge had started young. He’d been in enough scrapes in high school to get him kicked out for a time. People vouched that he never started the fights, but he did finish them, and not always with an assist from Kyle.
The fighting edge was still there, but it had turned inward. As a result, his guardedness was down, the coolness had dropped, and Mavis could read him like a book she shouldn’t want to finish. She tried to look away in front of Harmony, at least. Things were strange enough since Harmony and Kyle had happily announced their march into coupledom.
Gavin couldn’t see her clearly. She knew that. So why did it feel so intimate to hold his steady gaze? Maybe because even after they couldn’t see, the eyes were still the door to the soul?
Mavis locked herself down. Whatever it was that she was feeling, she felt it too much in too many places and she had to lock it down because, per her directions, Gavin had come here to live with Miss Zelda at the end of the road.
Prometheus showed his appreciation by pressing his head against Gavin’s thigh. “Hey, hey,” Gavin said, easing back. “Easy there, Cujo.” He was wearing a smile. It might no longer look natural, but it wove into his hard-angled features until Mavis had to look away.
Prometheus nuzzled against Gavin’s shoulder, earning more ear-scratching. Mavis’s spine snapped straight at the touch of envy. “Okay, enough,” she said, wrapping her arms around Prometheus’s middle.
“He’s fine,” Gavin said. “He seems like a good egg. He’s Lab, right?”
Harmony belted a laugh. “Try rottweiler.”
“Nah,” Gavin said doubtfully. He hooked his arm around Prometheus’s neck and glanced at Mavis.
“One hundred percent,” she confirmed. “Dad picked him up at the shelter for me when he was twelve weeks old. He said if I was going to live alone, I had to have a guard dog.”
Harmony shook her head, watching the display between man and dog. “If that’s a guard dog, I’m a canary.”
“Breeds like rottweiler can be seriously misunderstood in terms of behavior.” Mavis gestured to the lovey canine licking the seam of Gavin’s jeans near the knee in a slow savory manner. “Exhibit A.”
“So you’re a righteous beast, eh?” Gavin lowered his crown to Prometheus’s bowed one. “That makes two of us.”
The gesture from man to dog did something. Mavis’s palms dampened. Her lips parted as a rush of warmth flooded her. It started in her belly and curled like a wave before she sucked it back. Feelings, she reminded herself. No.
She studiously rolled her eyes as Prometheus continued to vie for Gavin’s affections. Trying not to follow the path of Gavin’s stroking hands on Prometheus’s ruff, she looked to the smoking truck. “What happened?”
Harmony groaned. “Overheated. Liv’s going to kill me.” She shivered as though contemplating the response of her cousin, Olivia Leighton, to having her beloved Ford maligned in such a way. Squinting from beneath the brim of the baseball cap that advertised the cropdusting and flight instruction business she shared with Mavis’s father, Harmony frowned at the steam. “We’ll have to call James for a tow.”
Gavin gained his feet. “It wouldn’t have blown its top if you didn’t drive like a heretic.”
“I drive just fine,” Harmony said dismissively.
“You drive like somebody trained in low-level aerobatics,” Gavin argued. “Which you are.”
“You like my driving,” she pointed out. “It puts you back in action, which you miss.”
Mavis watched his mouth fold and she quickly changed the subject. “At least you made it to Miss Zelda’s.”
“Everybody calls this woman Miss Zelda,” Gavin pointed out.
“So?” Mavis asked.
“So, normally that would mean she’s a person of importance or she’s older than…you know… Betty White.”
“Betty rocks,” Harmony declared.
“Actually, nobody knows how old Zelda is,” Mavis informed them. “I’m pretty sure anybody who does is dead.”
“So, great. She’s like biblical,” he muttered. His arms crossed over his big chest. “You set me up with an old lady?”
His smile was on the verge of creeping back into play. She sighed a little. A little, she told herself when the noise made her cringe. “You know what they say,” she said with a shrug. “Age is only a state of mind.”
“Uh-huh.”
He kept looking at her, stance stern, eyes amused and…unseeing. So why, again, did she feel like…
Like he was touching her?
Harmony’s voice broke into the interlude. “Wait a second. You two aren’t…”
Gavin slowly turned his head to her. “Aren’t what?” he asked when she only gawked at them.
“You guys aren’t into each other, are you?” Harmony asked. She held up her hands and took a step back. “Because blech!”
“Seriously?” Mavis responded. “When my brother’s not in training, aren’t you two normally camped out in bed together when your daughter’s not looking?”
“Good point,” Gavin said with a nod.
“Still, this better be some sort of revenge joke,” Harmony told them. “A new tactic to show me how awkward it’s been for the two of you since Kyle and I got together.”
“Of course it’s a joke,” Mavis said. Because how could Harmony’s brother be flirting with her? He was dealing with God only knew how many issues. For example, she was pretty sure he hadn’t yet come to terms with his disability. And she definitely, definitely was not his type.
She backtracked, jerking a thumb over her shoulder. “Grab your stuff. I’ll go tell Miss Zelda you’re here. Harmony, you can call for a tow inside. Come on, Prometheus.”
The dog reluctantly fell into step. She reached down and laid her hand against his snout when he sought her. It was still warm from Gavin’s touch.
If she wasn’t Gavin’s type, why did she feel his eyes on her as she walked away?
CHAPTER THREE
“SOMETHIN’ WAYLAID ME in the shower,” Gavin announced to Mavis as he wandered into the kitchen, closely following the mental blueprint he’d drawn of Zelda’s house during the introductory tour. It wasn’t the simplest layout, but he wasn’t blind enough that he couldn’t trust his keen inner compass. It only made most tasks he’d once thought simple now frustrating and a few everyday skills, like driving, impossible.
He found a halo of hair underneath one of the florescent lights on the other side of the high countertop. “Some kind of tree,” he elaborated.
Mavis answered, “Eucalyptus.”
Gavin frowned. The light had gone from the windows. There were a lot of windows in Miss Zelda’s house. The harshness of electric lighting burned the working parts of his right retina. “So the old lady’s aware she’s got plants growing in places they shouldn’t?”
“If you call her ‘old lady,’ she’s likely to strike you dead at some point. And, yes.” He heard a rustle. Pages turning. She was reading a book. Here at Zelda’s, half past dark? “The plants
are refreshing. For most people.”
He wrapped his fingers around the edge of granite and jerked his chin at her. “What’re you doing?”
“Studying,” she said plainly.
Feeling around the prep space, he found a large wooden bowl. Recognizing the cool touch of a smooth apple’s surface, he palmed it and brought it to his nose to sniff. “Algebra test in the morning?”
“In your mind, am I still a fresh-faced fourteen-year-old? Pre-tats? Pre-piercings? Prepubescent?”
Not at all, he mused, remembering what had transpired at the inn under the bougainvillea. Ah, that bougainvillea.
Passing the apple from one hand to the other, he countered, “Studying what?”
“Genealogical records.” More rustling. Gavin saw the white face of a page flash as she flipped to the next.
“Mmm.” He took a crunchy, satisfying bite from the apple.
Her head was low over the book. Her hair fell forward at a slicing angle. “It comes with the territory.”
“Territory?”
“The paranormal investigation and research territory,” she explained. She lifted her face. It shone under the bright light, freckles pronounced. He could see the red bow of her mouth. It’d always been lush, like that of her mother, Adrian. The dark slant of her eyes was masked by a large set of reading glasses. Old-fashioned, from what he could tell, and cat-eye. “Didn’t Miss Zelda tell you? This is where our spooky little business comes together.”
Gavin stopped chewing. “Here?”
“Yes. Here.”
He worked his jaw, deciding to study the red coating of the apple instead.
After several seconds, Mavis said, “Is that a problem?”
“No.” He shook his head. “No. Just…on the tour earlier, nobody mentioned athames or cauldrons.”
“Why would it matter if there were athames and cauldrons?” Mavis wondered. “I thought you didn’t believe in that stuff.”
Harlequin Superromance May 2018 Box Set Page 3
