It was true. Kate had visited Cemetery Tours fan sites and read all the gossip. Possessive fans had always been jealous of the friendship between Luke and Gail, but both had always come back and insisted that friendship was all that existed between them. Both had been incredibly open about other relationships, so there was no reason to expect them to lie about their feelings for each other, unless one of them had some strange reservation about dating a co-worker.
Or if the feelings were unrequited.
Michael definitely wasn’t convinced. “It just seemed kind of weird for him. Not that I know him all that well, but in all the times I have seen him, I’ve never known him to actually be so serious about anything.”
“Well, we’ve also never seen him behind the scenes of an investigation. His job is probably one of the few things that he does take very seriously. But on the other hand, maybe that’s the reason neither of them have been very successful with relationships.”
“I can’t really fault them on that,” Michael murmured. “I’ve never been good at relationships.”
“You’re good at this one,” Kate smiled up at him. “The best, I’d say.”
“I think that’s mostly your doing.” This time, Michael was the one who blushed.
“Well, I think you’re selling yourself short,” Kate told him, not caring at all that they sounded like cheesy romance characters in a bad Lifetime movie. “You were never the problem. You just had... complicated circumstances.”
“That’s very diplomatic of you.”
“Thanks,” Kate grinned. “And if I may say, I’m glad that none of those relationships worked out.”
“I am too,” Michael told her as she rose up on her tip toes to accept another kiss from his lips. So very, very tempted to invite him into her room, Kate had to fight against her desire and her impulsiveness as the kiss deepened and his arms tightened around her waist.
Bad idea, bad idea, she chanted inside her head, frustrated with herself for not being able to simply enjoy his embrace. Don’t do it.
Oh, but this place is so romantic, the lovelorn, whimsical dreamer inside her head argued. It’s so old and beautiful! Wouldn’t it just be wonderful in a place like this to just spend the night in his arms?
Well... yeah, it would...
After the kiss finally ended, Kate looked up into Michael’s dark eyes as she brushed a stray lock of hair away from her face and tucked it behind her ear.
“Michael, I...” she whispered. He leaned in and kissed her again, this time lightly, sweetly. She sighed. “I don’t want to, but we probably need to say goodnight.”
“Probably,” he echoed.
Kate wrapped her arms around his shoulders for one more kiss, then she set her feet firmly back on the ground and murmured softly, “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Kate,” he smiled. Then, he stood in the hallway and watched her as she made the short walk back to her room. She gave one final wave once she reached the door before locking herself in for the night.
Chapter 13
Morning came far too early for Michael. Even though the previous day had left him absolutely exhausted, he’d barely slept a wink. He’d only just managed to drift off when the abhorrent alarm on his cell phone began to chime.
Damn you, Luke Rainer. Because of course, it was his fault for demanding that everyone wake up so early.
Michael didn’t even know why Luke needed him to go on this little morning excursion. They weren’t looking for ghosts. They were interviewing people who might know something about the ghosts. In other words, Michael would be absolutely useless.
He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t been able to sleep. Maybe it was because he’d been expecting Sterling Hall to show up some time during the night. Ghosts always seemed to have a knack for showing up right as he was about to fall asleep. Being startled awake by dead people was something he’d always especially hated about his “gift.” Maybe expecting Sterling to barge in at some point in the night had made him edgy.
Or maybe it had just been the natural unease that came from trying to sleep in new surroundings. Despite the perfect comfort of the Fireside Room’s canopied bed, he’d found it nearly impossible to relax beneath the thick, red velvet comforter. The creaks and shudders of the building were different than those of his apartment bedroom and the air was so still and heavy that every sound seemed magnified.
Then again, it could have been Kate. It was the first time they’d ever spent the night under the same roof, and although he tried to convince himself that it should be the last thing on his mind, he couldn’t stop fixating on it. How easy would it have been, as she had mentioned, to sneak off to her room after everyone else had fallen asleep? He’d pretended not to catch that only because acknowledging that the temptation existed would have made it that much more difficult to resist.
He’d always known his feelings for her were real, but for the first time, he allowed himself to consider what it truly meant to love someone, and to be with that someone in ways he’d never before dared to fathom. Love, he realized, was more than just a fleeting desire, or a brief glimpse into a fairy tale, or a flash of playful flirtation in her beautiful hazel eyes. It was more than infatuation with a person’s best qualities, or reluctant acceptance of their less appealing traits. Real love meant loving the whole person, in every form, in every state, in every way. It was what transformed the ordinary monotony of everyday life into extraordinary moments of warmth and compassion and joy.
He knew, as surely as he’d ever known anything, that saying goodnight to the girl he loved had been the hardest thing he’d ever done.
The second hardest, he thought miserably, will be getting out of bed this morning. Eager as he was to see Kate, he wouldn’t have said no to at least a few more hours of sleep.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t going to happen. Michael had a terrible feeling that if he didn’t show up for breakfast, Luke would send him a personal wake-up call, and Michael could not think of a worse way to be hustled out of bed than by the insufferably cheerful and reprehensibly loud morning person that was Luke Rainer.
With the promise of a hot shower to motivate him, Michael dragged himself out of the warmth and comfort of the scarlet sheets and headed for his personal bathroom.
A quick fifteen minutes later, he marched out of his room and into the hallway, not bothering to lock the door behind him. Although his hair was still dripping wet from his shower, he’d at least managed to shave and brush his teeth before he threw on a pair of jeans, a long-sleeved button down shirt, and a sweater vest.
Brink appeared as soon as Michael set foot in the hallway.
“You know what really makes me sad? The fact that I have an incredible sense of style, but no one appreciates it because I’m dead. You, however, dress like a stiff even though you’re living, breathing, and from what I can tell, incredibly visible.”
“What are you talking about?” Michael asked, not nearly awake enough for his friend’s senseless rambling.
“You take no advantage of your visibleness. If I were still alive, I’d go crazy! I might dye my hair, get a few tattoos, and wear the coolest clothes imaginable.” When Michael didn’t even bother to validate that with a response, Brink heaved an exaggerated sigh. “God, everything is wasted on the living.”
“So, what I’m getting from this is that you don’t approve of my clothes,” Michael stated.
“Yes!” Brink cried, pleased that his friend finally got it.
“What’s wrong with them?”
That was apparently the wrong question to ask, because Brink didn’t look like he knew quite where to begin, thus effectively putting an end to any hope he may have held of cultivating a better sense of what not to wear in Michael. His friend was clearly a helpless case.
“Nothing. Nothing at all,” Brink told him. “You are so lucky that Kate’s into nerds.”
As it turned out, Kate wasn’t waiting for him at breakfast. Much to his dismay, Michael was one of the first guests
to arrive at the table, second only to...
“Morning, Mikey!” Luke greeted him with a broad, sunny grin. “Did you have any visitors last night?”
Michael was so shocked that for a moment, he couldn’t figure out how to make his body function. Luke was seriously asking him about that? How close did he think they were?
Fortunately, it took only one curious glance from Luke to tell Michael that he hadn’t meant the girlfriend kind of visitor. He’d, of course, meant the ghostly kind.
“Oh. No,” Michael answered honestly.
“Hmm. Sterling Hall is not being nearly as social as I’d hoped he’d be,” Luke looked contemplative as he took a sip of coffee out of a steaming mug. “By the way, Mikey, have some coffee. Mrs. Drake told us to help ourselves to anything in the kitchen, but I thought I’d wait until more of the crew was up before I opened anything.”
“Good idea,” Michael said, pouring himself a cup of coffee. He was still slightly embarrassed for misinterpreting Luke’s earlier inquiry. Thankfully, neither Luke nor Brink, who was staring wistfully at the expensive coffee-maker, had picked up on it.
“I miss coffee,” Brink remarked sadly, watching Michael take a sip. After over ten years of friendship, Michael was used to Brink watching him eat and drink. Brink often said that he missed everything about life, but something he missed most was the simple joy of taste.
As if right on cue, Kate and Gavin trudged into the dining room. Gavin looked moderately awake, but Kate could barely keep her eyes open. She was still dressed in her pajama bottoms and an overly large hooded sweatshirt, and her hair was tied up in a messy bun on top of her head.
“Coffee,” Kate murmured, sounding like a zombie demanding brains. She perked up a little as soon as she saw Michael. “Hey,” she greeted him with a brief, sleepy hug around the waist. “You look cute.”
“She likes nerds,” Brink reiterated.
“So do you,” Michael told her.
“Oh, no I don’t. But I will. After coffee,” she maneuvered past him and reached for the coffee pot without even acknowledging Luke.
“Wow. I am seeing a whole new side of you, Kate,” he said.
“This is only a glimpse of Kate in her natural morning state,” Gavin explained with a yawn. “It usually takes at least two cups of coffee before she’s able to make any sort of polite conversation.”
Kate muttered something unintelligible, probably not at all polite, into her coffee mug.
The rest of the crew appeared a few minutes later.
“I think he came into my room last night,” Gail announced excitedly.
“Sterling?” Luke asked.
“Yeah. I was just about to fall asleep when all of a sudden, the hairs on my arms began to stand on end, even though I was buried beneath my blankets. I noticed it had gotten really cold inside the room, so I went to see if all the windows were closed, when I turned around and saw a tall figure standing in the corner of my bedroom. Well, naturally, I ran to get my digital recorder and EMF detector, but by the time I’d gotten everything together, he was gone.”
“Are you sure it was him?” Luke asked.
“Well, I guess it could have been Joanna. But since he was the one who showed up last night during the séance, I figured it was him. Like I said, I didn’t get a chance to communicate with him.”
“At least we know that he’s open to us,” JT commented.
“Did you see anything last night, Michael?” Peter asked. Michael simply shook his head. “Wonder why he’d appear to Gail and not to you. You’re the one who can see them, right?”
“But Sterling doesn’t know that. Besides, Gail was the one doing most of the talking last night. If he was going to make a connection with someone, it would most likely be her,” Luke answered. “Besides, if you were dead, wouldn’t you rather talk to a pretty girl than a dude? No offense, Mikey.”
Michael shrugged it off. He was too busy watching Brink fidget nervously in the corner of the room to pay attention to what was being said. In the several years they had been friends, Michael had never once seen Brink lose his cool. Something was up.
“What?” He cornered his friend once everyone else had disappeared into the kitchen to decide on breakfast.
“What?” Brink echoed, trying and failing to sound like he had no idea what Michael was talking about.
“You look really uncomfortable, which I’ve come to believe is impossible given that the only thing you’ve ever been uncomfortable about in your existence is the fact that your mother named you Eugene.”
“Dude, don’t spread that around,” Brink muttered in a low voice that no one else could hear.
Michael looked his friend square in the eye. “What did you do?”
“Okay. If I tell you, will you promise not to get mad and yell at me?”
“I’m pretty sure that’s a promise I won’t be able to keep,” Michael said. “Talk.”
Brink twiddled his fingers for a few moments while he figured out how best to begin.
“Let’s just say...” His blue eyes scanned the ceiling while he tapped his chin. “I can pretty much guarantee that the ghost in Gail’s bedroom last night... wasn’t Sterling.” It took a moment to register what his best friend was trying to say.
“Wait a minute,” Michael stared at him. “It was you?”
“Maybe...”
“What the heck were you doing in her bedroom?”
“I’ve told you before! I spy on people. It’s what I do. I’m a perpetual people watcher!”
“So that’s what you do at night? You wander around in girls’ rooms and watch them sleep?”
“Give me a little credit. I’m not creepy. I watch all kinds of people all the time. Want to know why? Because being dead is boring.”
“But here? With the crew? Brink, what are you thinking?” Michael asked.
“Okay, for the record, Gail is the first person to ever notice, and that was just poor judgment on my part. I should have figured that a professional ghost hunter would be able to tell when a ghost was in the room,” Brink remarked off-handedly. “You’re missing the point of this confession. The only reason I am feeling even remotely guilty about this is because now the Cemetery Tours people think that Sterling Silver or whatever his name is is reaching out to them and... he’s not. At least not as far as I know.” Before Michael could respond, Kate poked her head back into the dining room.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yeah, fine,” he answered automatically.
“Tell her I say hi,” Brink said.
“Shut up,” Michael hissed.
“Oh. Good morning, Brink,” Kate grinned and waved before she retreated back into the kitchen.
“She’s so great,” Brink said. “You know, I’m a little surprised that the two of you spent the night alone.”
The fact that Brink knew that triggered all sorts of alarm bells in Michael’s mind.
“Brink, please, please, please tell me you did not spy on Kate too.”
“I did not spy on Kate,” Brink promised. “I used to. But then after I found out about all that sensitivity crap, I figured it was best for me to keep my distance. Besides, it didn’t feel right, knowing how you feel about her and everything. I’ve got to warn you though, she likes to sing when she thinks she’s alone, and I can tell you right now, it is not - ”
“Brink!” Michael exploded. “Okay, starting today, no more spying. No more nightly rendezvous. You either stay with me or you watch a movie. That’s it.”
“So... you’d rather have me lurking around your room... all the time,” Brink translated.
Well, no. Michael really wouldn’t prefer that. But in the end, it really didn’t matter what he thought or said. It was futile trying to give a ghost an ultimatum because they literally had nothing to lose.
“You know what? Forget it. Do what you want. Just... try to be respectful.”
“Bro, you know me. I’m always respectful.”
Yeah right, Mich
ael thought grimly as Brink flashed him a cheeky grin before disappearing on the spot.
Resolving to keep their conversation to himself, Michael ran a hand through his damp, messy hair and went to help his friends prepare breakfast in the kitchen.
Chapter 14
“Our first stop this morning is Dock Square,” Luke announced once everyone had piled back into the vans. Kate and Michael were once again riding with Luke and Gail, but Gavin had been transferred over to the tech van. Luke claimed that since all the luggage had been unpacked, there would be more room over in the other van, but Kate wondered if his actions were truly motivated by space or if they stemmed from a desire to keep Gavin as far away from Gail as possible. Before Kate could speculate more on the matter, however, Luke continued. “We’ll be interviewing Marian Davis. She owns a gift shop, Waterside Treasures, and yes, you can shop around once we’re done filming.”
“How do you find people to interview?” Kate asked.
“Most of the time, they come to us. There are a lot of people out there with stories and experiences, but unfortunately there are only so many minutes that we can dedicate to individual interviews. Marian Davis, however, is a direct descendent of Joanna’s cousin. She’s like, her great-great-great granddaughter or something and she offered to tell us as much as she knows about her family history.”
The drive into town was a short one, and in no time at all, the Cemetery Tours crew was once again unloading and assembling various pieces of video and recording equipment. Kate and Michael offered to help in any way that they could, so Luke put them on battery duty for any device that started running low on juice.
After they were finally set up and ready to go, they set out on foot on their way to Route 9, the street at the heart of Dock Square. Kate realized, looking around at the quaint, old-fashioned shops, boutiques, and restaurants, that she could easily fall in love with a small seaside town like Kennebunkport. Everything, from the colorful wooden buildings to the faint scent of saltwater on the cool autumn breeze, appealed to her.
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