“Not white. Cream or egg-shell.” She closed her mouth with a clack of teeth. Crap. He always tricked her into admitting things like that. “Shut up,” she said preemptively which made him laugh again. “You’re holding off on painting the outside just to make me crazy.”
He picked up a white clump of clover and ran it along her arm near her elbow. It made her shiver even though she tried not to. “Is it making you crazy?”
Everything about him made her crazy. He was the one ghost she might never exorcise.
As if he heard her thoughts, he said, “You know it’s still haunted, right?”
“Your house?” It surprised her enough that she turned to face him. “The house you’re flipping—is haunted?”
“Yup. That’s why I figure the bet still stands.”
She narrowed her eyes as their gazes met. “Like…for reals? Haunted?” She sounded like she’d never left Rye Patch and went to college up north. She’d already slipped back into all the old slang after only a year back. It was tenaciously resilient—like a superbug—or roaches.
He shrugged. “Yup. Things have happened there that make no sense. It might stay haunted forever if I can’t figure out how to get rid of its ghosts.”
She waited for him to laugh and punch her shoulder—treat her like he had back then. He’d called her ‘Duck’ ten years ago when he’d challenged her too—she remembered that. So, she had been obvious. Damn. Finally, she asked, “Are you serious? If this is a joke….”
He held up both hands. “No joke. I swear on my mother’s grave….”
“I’m going to tell her you said that, and she won’t find it at all funny. I helped her find a rare copy of Catcher in the Rye to auction off at the fall festival.” Corrine kept a small bookstore on Main Street even though ninety-five percent of her business was done online. She’d closed early today so she watch the sun go down on October twenty-fourth and kick out her own ghosts once and for all.
“Yeah, she said that. Said she was impressed—that you really know your stuff when it comes to books,” he said as he went back to rubbing the clover across her arm.
She grabbed his hand, stopping him…that was all she’d intended, but it hit her heart like a lightning strike—and she wished she hadn’t touched him again. Her ghosts were never going away, not in this town, not with Clay still around.
He grabbed her hand in a firm grip when she went to pull it away. “The bet still stands, Cory…we shook on it.”
It was rare that he called her anything but ‘Duck’ and it sent squirrelly heat bouncing around inside her chest. She’d only shaken on it to get out of that room in the library. They’d been in one of the study rooms, and she’d felt like maybe things were different between them—maybe he was starting to feel something for her. Then, he’d joked about her spending the night in the haunted house and bet her she was too chicken to do it. And she’d felt it—her illusions shattering at her feet like she’d dropped glass. He’d never see her like she saw him. So, she’d shaken his hand and got out of there so fast she’d left skid marks.
That was the last time she’d tutored him, and she’d tried to make it the last time she saw him. No one had gotten as good at avoiding him as she had. She’d raised it to an art. By the time graduation had come and gone, she’d made plans to be gone…and plans to leave her ghosts behind.
“I’m surprised you even remember,” she said, trying to tug her hand from his. He wouldn’t let go. Clay Matthews could be so irritating.
What would he have done if she’d shown up that night? Laughed at her probably. Or maybe he would have actually made her stay the night in that house, and it was really eerie and creepy back then. One night—alone—in a haunted house for a measly twenty bucks.
“Of course I remember, this is Rye Patch, not Chicago.”
She went still again. It’s not like it was a huge secret where she’d been all these years but it still surprised her that he’d mentioned it—that he’d remembered.
“You wouldn’t even be trespassing this time.”
Yeah, there was no way she’d have done it, and that was part of it. She could see getting arrested and compounding the humiliation with a trip to the police station. Hell, for all she knew, maybe the final part of the joke would have been for Clay to turn her in. It would have been cheating to do that in order to win the bet, but he’d been smiling at her at the time—and who knew what Clay was up to when he was smiling.
“We’re not kids anymore, Clay.”
“So, you are welching on the bet, then?” He said it matter-of-factly like he was just setting the record straight.
She bit her lower lip. It didn’t feel right—to welch on a bet. Maybe the bet was another ghost haunting her and costing her sleep at night.
“I’ll give you top rate on inflation and make it fifty.” He was still holding her hand. It was scrambling her brain.
“I.…” She shook her head.
“I’ll paint the house whatever color you want if you win.”
That was tempting. Forcing him to help her win the bet was awfully tempting. She’d never been able to get the upper hand on Clay. Ever.
There was just that niggling concern….
“What do you get out of this?” she asked, shaking her head again.
“What do you mean what do I get out of this? A bet is a bet. A bet is a time-honored tradition in Rye Patch. We take our bets seriously.”
“Yes, but is it just the chance to laugh at me whether I win or lose? Is that the draw?”
He was so quiet she might have thought he wasn’t there if she didn’t always feel a heightened awareness of him when he was around…and, of course, if he wasn’t still holding her hand. Clay was still holding her hand. He’d never held her hand this long before, not even when they’d been kids, before they’d realized there were other reasons to hold hands besides just staying together.
“Is that what you thought?” he asked softly.
His voice sounded so different from when he’d been teasing her that she actually turned and looked at him. She even met his gaze and stared into his hazel eyes. She’d always thought he’d gotten the best part of every color in his eyes. Like genetics hadn’t been able to settle on which color would be best so it’d given him everything. Now he had small lines on the edge of his eyes from all these years…all these years of calling her ‘Duck.’
She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to. Of course that’s what she thought. There was no other logical reason he’d bet a seventeen year old girl that she wouldn’t spend the night in a haunted house. That was a bet guys made with their twelve year old guy friends. And they made that bet for the sole purpose of torturing their friends into doing something stupid. She wasn’t even sure you’d do that to a friend. It was a bet you only made with enemies so you could laugh at them whether they won or not.
“So, that’s what you thought back then too?”
She still didn’t answer. Of course she did. Seriously. She’d been working up the nerve to ask him to the high school dance, and he’d wanted to challenge her into doing something stupid. She’d shaken on the bet so she wouldn’t cry right in front of him. As it was, she only lasted until her front yard so her elderly neighbor brought over a pie that night thinking they’d had a death in the family.
“When have I ever laughed at you, Cory?”
“You did…just now…because you heard I’d bet on off-white paint.”
“No, that was laughing at your bet. I laughed at my mom’s bet too. She was pulling for red to match the bricks. She seems to think I should let her win just because she’s my mom. I’ve never laughed at you.”
She rolled her eyes and looked away. This new fake sincerity was to make her lower her defenses and fall for it. “You do all the time. Last week, when I wore my hair in braids, you said I looked twelve years old again. Yesterday, you came into my shop just to tell me my muffler was waking up half the town and that you were all taking bets on when it’d actually blow
up.”
“And I offered to fix it for you, and the other was only teasing you because I like when you do that thing where you click your tongue and look away like you’d spank me if you could.”
She clicked her tongue and looked away…and then froze and winced. Did she always do that? Maybe he had good reason to make fun of her. She stayed looking away from him. “Look, some of us just don’t enjoy being poked fun of constantly. Go find someone else to torture.”
Why was he still holding her hand? Pretty soon, she’d get so uncomfortable that her palm would sweat, and then he’d have another thing to make fun of.
Another long moment of silence. This one she wasn’t going to fill. He wasn’t going to force her to respond to him.
Finally, finally, he said, “What if I stopped teasing you—because that’s all it was—what if I stopped?”
Sometimes, he made no sense at all. She shifted so she could see him out of the corner of her eye. He was staring at her with what looked like a serious expression. “What do you mean ‘what if’?”
“Tonight. The old Miller place—which I now own—if I promise to stop teasing you, will you come tonight and finish off our bet?”
It was tempting. She didn’t like the idea of letting a bet go any more than he apparently did. A bet was a bet. Plus, he’d stop making fun of her. A bet was a bet—he’d have to stop.
“And you’ll stop calling me Duck?” It hadn’t bothered her when she thought it was a childhood nickname that stuck like glue, but now it implied she’d had a crush on him for over two decades and he knew it.
“No. Sorry, that’s outside the scope of the bet. And even if I stopped saying it out loud, I’d still call you Duck in my head.”
She turned to glare at him before clicking her tongue and looking away. Her mouth dropped open the minute she did, and then she did snatch her hand from beneath his so she could cover her face with both her hands. “I can’t believe I really do that,” she said through her fingers. Maybe everyone in town had noticed and made fun of her for it too.
“I think it’s cute that you never noticed before now.”
“See, you can’t even go a full minute without making fun of me.”
Another long silence.
“I’ll come paint your shop—in front of the whole town—if you do it. So they’ll know that you won.”
She dropped her hands and stared at him. “They know about that bet? Please tell me they don’t know. Have they always known?” There was an unofficial official bet book in Lenny’s ice cream parlor, and he was always in charge of holding any money—unofficially. Most bets made it in there. If they’d known all this time…. Well, if they’d known a decade ago, there would have been a cop car waiting for her to show up and escort her home.
“No. It’s just between you and me. But if anyone asks why I’m painting your shop, you can tell them it’s because I lost a bet. Actually you can tell them whatever you want. Or nothing at all and let them assume.”
“Let them assume what?”
“I don’t know. You’d have to ask them. Do we have a bet or not? One night in a haunted house in exchange for fifty bucks, painting my house whatever color you want, I’ll stop teasing you, and I’ll come paint your shop.”
Now, the bet seemed lop-sided in the opposite direction it had when they were teenagers. Back then, she’d thought that only a real moron would take a bet like that for only twenty bucks. Even with them making minimum wage, twenty bucks wasn’t worth looking like a fool and staying in a haunted house overnight and possibly being arrested. “You must really want to see me lose,” she said.
He sighed and muttered, “It’s like we’re not even in the same world.”
He was just now realizing that? She’d known that since they were kids, and she’d started following the cutest boy Rye Patch had ever seen.
Sometimes he wanted to shake her until she opened her eyes and saw what everyone else saw.
When his mom had told him that Cory had low self-esteem and was shy, he’d laughed at that. She’d always given as good as she got in high school—up until he’d made that bet and then she’d wanted nothing to do with him and skipped town as soon as she graduated. Since she was back, they’d slipped back into their old patterns like the bet hadn’t ruined everything. It was a chance reminding her, but he thought now that she was older…she’d figure out what was going on, and they could maybe rewrite history.
Talk about a haunting. That bet had haunted him for a decade.
Never, in a million years, never in the decade since they’d made that bet, never had he thought what she’d thought…that this was all some cruel joke on her. No wonder she’d avoided him. If the guy who had always been there for you turned against you one day for the sake of a bet…well, things made a bit more sense to him at the very least.
His mom was going to give him hell if she found out she was right, and that he had been an idiot all these years.
“Is there power on in the house?” she asked suddenly.
It was about time he got some traction with her on this. He was about to throw in standing outside her shop holding a sign—a sign that said anything she wanted it to say. He’d practically been doing that for a year anyway. She might be the only one in the entire town who hadn’t realized he’d been doing the adult equivalent to pulling her braids and, last week, he had actually pulled her braids, and she still didn’t get it.
“Yes, there’s power on in the house. I was only using a generator when I was working on the electricity.” He’d had someone come in and help with that as he always did, but this time he’d paid for more help along the way to get it ready in time and for it to be perfect—the last thing he wanted was for an electrical fire or for pipes to burst. The house was a monster of a project, but it had been a monster in his life for a decade, and he was killing that demon at the same time as finishing off this bet.
“So, I show up…spend the night in the house…by myself….”
He frowned. “No, I’ll be there.” Of course he’d be there. That was the whole point of the bet from the minute he’d thought of it.
“To make sure I don’t leave?”
“No.” He should just say it—say how he felt—but he still didn’t. “Because I’m not about to let you stay the night alone in a haunted house.”
“Were you going to stay ten years ago?” Her voice was so soft that if he was a couple feet closer to Main Street and the slow rumble of cars carrying people coming home from working in the city, he’d have never heard her.
“Of course I was.” Wow, it was just amazing how much he’d screwed up. It had seemed so obvious. Had he really not said he was going to be staying with her? He’d thought he had. Maybe he had, and she’d heard what she’d expected to hear.
“Oh.” She went really quiet for one of those long ‘puzzling everything out’ moments. He liked that she had to overthink everything. Or he had. He’d had no idea she’d been overthinking things between them. She had to stop that. She’d been taking his teasing completely the wrong way.
How could she have low self-esteem? If he hadn’t declared her off limits early on, every guy in town their age would have been after her….
Oh.
“Hell,” he muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
She went back to thinking.
No wonder she’d left town for so long. It all looked different if you started off with the assumption that the beautiful, intelligent, fiery blonde beside him had low self-esteem—low self-esteem that he may have helped along by making sure she never had dates. Also a few of the girls Clay had dated to make Cory jealous hadn’t taken their part in this so well, and they’d actually been nasty to her until he could put a stop to it. Girls really could be mean when scorned—or whatever that phrase was.
He still wanted to shake Cory. She had mirrors in her house. Was she blind? She’d gotten scholarships to half the colleges that existed. Obviously, she was intell
igent. He’d been after her for the better part of three decades. Not that he was that great a catch, but still…. She should have the healthiest self-esteem on the planet.
He glanced over at her. Staring just seemed to make her uncomfortable if the anxious way she was acting was any indication. It was hard not to stare, beyond the fact that she was blowing his mind with her interpretation of everything, she also was wearing a red, ruffly top that reminded him of babydoll lingerie—only in cotton, and the blue jeans she had on were so worn and snug he wanted to run his hands across them.
She dragged a hand through her short, blonde curls. She’d always had short hair. Her mom had once told him that if her hair got any longer than two inches it would turn into a rat’s nest of knots.
Her mom even knew how he felt about her! He’d practically lived at her house up until they’d hit puberty, and he couldn’t be around her without wanting her.
Actually that hadn’t changed. He still wanted her sprawled out beneath him, his hands in her blonde hair and her mouth against his.
It wasn’t a reason her dad should have a shotgun ready anymore at the very least. Though, with how protective her parents were, he still might. Her dad had put the fear into Clay when they’d been fifteen, and he’d wanted to take her to the movies for her birthday. Most girls got to date before they were seniors in high school, not Cory. Her dad wouldn’t even let him ask her to dances until that last year—when she’d avoided him like he was the plague.
Even her dad knew how he felt! Her dad also knew what lurked in the mind of every fifteen year old boy when confronted with a girl with a siren’s body and the smile of the girl next door. Her dad knew exactly what Clay had been thinking when he was a fifteen year old boy…and a sixteen year old boy…and a seventeen year old boy.
Cory licked her lips…slowly.
And a twenty-seven year old man. Her dad hadn’t mentioned staying away from her anymore, and he and her dad had been spending a lot of time together—with her dad being the best electrician in town. Her dad didn’t seem opposed to them being together as adults. In fact, he’d cuffed Clay over the head a week ago when he’d finished up the outlets in the master bedroom and told him to stop stringing Cory along.
How To Bring Your Love Life Back From The Dead Page 13
