Ghost of a Chance (Banshee Creek Book 2)

by Gonzalez, Ani

  She looked at the computer games glumly. She'd been so excited about the remodel only a few days ago. But now she was fighting an urge to sprint for her car and drive all the way back to California. Why was she dragging her feet?

  It must be the beige. There was so much beige, it was scary. She had two gallons of beige paint, beige fabric for the chairs, and beige cushions. She also had a set of antique botanical prints. The frames were silver and the mats were, of course, beige. The flowers, however, were pink. It was all very pretty, and very, very beige. She hated it. She simply wasn't a beige person.

  Her mom, however, wouldn't consider any other color. Oh well, it was a small price to pay for her happiness.

  She forced herself to go to work. First, she tackled the desk, which was a mess. She carried the computer and printer to the dining room. Heck, those things were heavy. She was already tired and she'd barely started.

  Next came the piles of paperwork. She stared at the pile of Middleburg real estate listings left on the desk. Throwing those out would feel really good. Come to think of it, a bonfire would feel even better. Once Gabe signed on the dotted line, she'd grab a couple of logs and have a party.

  Damn, she was thinking about him again. She had to stop that. The Haunted Orchard party had been a big wake-up call. House hunting with Banshee Creek Gabe had been fun. But she couldn't deal with Manhattan Gabe.

  Curse the Howrey House. If it weren't for that grotto, she would have kept her hands off Gabe. She would have gone home, read a novel, and gone to sleep. Okay, maybe she would have indulged in a fantasy or two, especially if she read the rest of that spicy bestseller on her bedside table. But there would have been no sex, no entanglement. It would have remained on the fantasy plane. The fantasy plane was easy to deal with. Hot, sweaty sex wasn't so easy. Hot, sweaty, absolutely fabulous sex was even worse.

  And it had been hot. She had to admit that too. Fantasies she hadn't known she had had been turned to flesh. Elizabeth didn't recognize the girl who'd stripped her clothes off in Gabe's hotel room. Had that really been her? Or the girl who'd demanded that he tie her up in the Rosemoor. Shy, careful Elizabeth Hunt? It seemed impossible. And yet, it had happened.

  How bizarre.

  And she wanted it to happen again. That was the most disturbing aspect. She'd hoped that their attraction would burn out once they'd slept together. But no such luck.

  Still, Gabe would be gone soon, and now it was time to focus on the imminent beige-ification of Cole's bedroom. She'd procrastinated for months. Time to get to work.

  But her feet weren't moving.

  She really didn't want to do this. Maybe she could just put the boxes in Zach's truck and ask him to take everything to the dump. She didn't really have to look through Cole's stuff. She could just throw it all out.

  She looked at the boxes and slumped in defeat. She couldn't do that. Sure, her mom couldn't bring herself to look at any of Cole's possessions right now, but that could change. In a couple of years, she may want to use his possessions to remember her son's life.

  Elizabeth remembered putting pictures into the boxes. There were also some books. Cole had a rare edition of Jules Michelet's La Sorcière with annotations by Guillermo del Toro. They could give that to one of his friends. Or maybe Gabe would want it. She shook the thought out of her head. She didn't want to think about Gabe. She'd look through the books and pictures instead. If she felt like going on, she'd also look through the clothes. If it got too hard, she'd take a rest and break out the Ben & Jerry's.

  Decision made, she got to work. She opened the first box and found framed diplomas. Those were keepers, so she put them aside. There, that wasn't so hard – practically painless, in fact.

  She kept on digging and threw a bunch of papers away, including what looked like a pile of Dungeons & Dragons maps, and kept on digging. She found more papers, a cookbook her mother had given to Cole in a wild burst of optimism, several video game booklets, and a couple of porn magazines. She quickly stuffed the magazines in the trash bag. This was sibling TMI.

  After a half hour, she had a half-full garbage bag and a manageable stack of family pictures to keep.

  And she hadn't shed one tear. Good.

  She opened up the next box, which had a bunch of Army stamps, and found a bunch of military commendations. Her brother had, to everyone's surprise, been a model soldier. She put those in the keeper pile and pulled out a picture of her mom in her wedding dress. An overly made-up Mary Hunt smiled into the camera, looking young and happy. She sighed and put the picture in the keeper pile.

  Then she pulled out a picture of her brother hugging her after her eighth-grade graduation. She was wearing a polyester cap and gown and a huge smile, and Cole looked happy and carefree. Oh man, her braces belonged in one of her brother's horror movies. He'd taken this pic with him on his tour of duty?

  Rats, she was tearing up.

  She dug out another picture. This one showed Cole, Gabe, and three other guys. Her brother was smiling and joking, and everyone was calm and relaxed. The photo wasn't that old. It must have been taken shortly before he died, probably during one of his ghost-hunting trips. The guys were carrying cameras and they looked dirty and sweaty. No surprise there, Cole loved tough trips. They were his favorite escape. When ghost hunting hadn't taken him far enough, he'd enlisted. When that wasn't far enough, he'd volunteered for service overseas. In the end, the need to escape had finally killed him.

  She looked at the other figures in the picture. Gabe looked muddy and disheveled, a world away from the put-together executive who'd taken her to the Haunted Orchard inauguration. She put the picture to the side. This Gabe didn't exist anymore.

  She hesitated for a second, then threw the picture in the trash bag and carried on. She went through the boxes mechanically, barely looking at the contents. She saved some pictures and papers for her mom, who might someday want evidence of her dead son's military career, but threw most of it away. The process was oddly cathartic. True, she cried through most of it, but the tears were long overdue. It was, as her L.A. therapist would say, a much-needed cleansing.

  She was taping the boxes closed when she heard the doorbell. Who could that be? It was too early for the truck. She walked toward the front door. Was her mom back already? She wouldn't put it past her dad to cancel the vacation. But a loud, rhythmic knocking rang out, and she smiled with relief. She knew that knock.

  She opened the door and greeted Holly and Ben. Holly was holding the toddler as he energetically banged on the fox-shaped door knocker. He gave her a toothy grin and banged again, triumphantly. His mom smiled an apology.

  "Sorry about that, Elizabeth." Holly was dressed up in a plaid skirt and patent leather pumps, and she sounded harried. "He loves that silly door knocker. We just came to see if you were okay."

  "I'm fine," she replied. She motioned her friend into the house and closed the door. Ben ran to the kitchen to raid the cookie jar, but Holly stayed in the living room, looking worried. "Why wouldn't I be okay?" Elizabeth asked. A twelve-hour The X-Files marathon didn't count as a breakdown, right?

  "Well, you're wearing Cole's Night Stalker shirt, which is never good news."

  "What do you have against Kolchak? He's a classic." And definitely not a sign of illness, mental or otherwise.

  Holly looked skeptical. "Well, if you're okay, then why weren't you at the meeting?"

  "Meeting? What meeting?" A feeling of dread came over her.

  "The Town Council meeting. It just ended. They were voting on the ghost tours."

  "I wasn't notified about a meeting." Her mind was racing. This wasn't good. "Let me guess, Caine asked to speak to the Council." She forced herself to calm down. There was no need to panic. Caine was a horrible speaker. He couldn't convince a chicken to cross the road.

  "Nope. Gabe spoke."

  Elizabeth's heart sank. Gabe was a different kettle of über-successful executive fish. If he talked to the Committee, they wouldn't just give him ghost tour
s, they'd blow up a giant marshmallow man and parade it down Main Street.

  "Second guess," she said, with a growing sense of dread. "The ghost tours are back on."

  "Like Donkey Kong." Holly pushed her tortoiseshell glasses up her nose. She did that when she was agitated. "Zombie-infested, lycanthropic Donkey Kong with a taste for virgin blood. Gabe didn't just want ghost tours. He wanted a complete town makeover. Haunted house attractions, horror movie festival, zombie convention." She paused dramatically. "He got all of it."

  Dread turned into rage. White-hot, volcanic rage. But she had to admit that Gabe was clever. He had outmaneuvered her. By skillfully declawing the Historical Preservation Committee, he'd avoided another disastrous town meeting.

  "Did anyone bring up the effect on the town's other businesses?" she asked in as mild a tone as she could muster.

  "Oh, yes. PRoVE agreed to take into account the needs of the mundies."

  "Mundies?"

  "Short for 'mundanes.'"

  Elizabeth's voice was a deadly whisper. "They called us mundies?"

  "Yep. Gabe said he found a way to make sure all the townspeople benefitted." Holly smiled apologetically. "Even the mundies."

  Elizabeth fists clenched. "This is a disaster." She forced her hands to unclench as she considered the catastrophe. "Did he by any chance share his super-duper plan?"

  "No." Holly's curls bounced as she shook her head. "Not exactly."

  "So the Committee just took his word for it?" Elizabeth couldn't believe it. Had the world gone mad?

  "Pretty much. He was very convincing."

  "I bet."

  "And everyone knows that you two are, you know..." Holly's voice trailed off and she wiggled her eyebrows in a meaningful way.

  Elizabeth's eyes narrowed. "Everyone knows what?"

  "That he's in love with you. That's why the Committee let him have his way. They figured he wouldn't stab you in the back."

  "Oh, they did, did they?" The Committee was wrong. Dead wrong. She'd been played. Played by an expert. She'd never stood a chance.

  Her phone rang, startling her. She looked at the name on the screen, feeling a wave of pain and betrayal overtake her. She pushed back the hurt and focused on the anger. Anger was good. Anger would get her through this.

  "Hi, Gabe," she said into the phone as Holly's eyes widened in horror.

  "I brought the pick-up truck," Gabe said. "And I'm turning into your street."

  "You didn't have to bring the truck," she said with eerie calm. "You've helped me enough already." A note of sarcasm crept into her voice, but she sounded quite rational. This was some of the best acting she'd ever done. Her Hollywood coach would be proud.

  Gabe noticed it. "You heard about the meeting." He sounded completely unrepentant.

  "Oh, yes, I heard plenty about the meeting. How dare you go behind my back?"

  She heard an exasperated sigh on the end of the line.

  "I can explain the meeting, Elizabeth." The reasonable, pacifying tone made her want to kick him. Hard. "And I know that you're cleaning Cole's room. I don't want you to do it alone. Meet me at the front door. And don't lift anything." He hung up abruptly.

  Elizabeth fought the urge to throw her phone against the wall. Who the hell did Gabe think he was? And who the hell was he to be giving orders? Don't lift anything? She was going to lift a box full of discarded military paraphernalia right onto his head.

  "Maybe you should hear him out," Holly cautioned.

  Elizabeth opened her mouth to respond, but at that moment, Ben came back from the kitchen. His face was smeared with chocolate and he was holding a cookie in each hand. The cookie jar had been successfully raided.

  "Oben," he ordered imperiously. "Oben, Aunt Lizzie."

  Elizabeth took the cookies. They were wrapped in cellophane paper. She looked at the label. It featured pink-and-orange stripes in a white, ghost-like silhouette, and the logo read "Banshee Creek Bakery." A sticker informed the holder that she was cordially invited to the bakery's grand reopening.

  She stifled a sigh. Her friend had gone full Benedict Arnold, hadn't she?

  Holly picked up her wayward son and aimed an apprehensive glance at her friend. "Maybe Gabe really does have a plan."

  "Oh, he'd better have a plan," Elizabeth said darkly. "And that plan had better involve leaving Zach's truck in the driveway and running away from this house as fast as possible."

  The poltergeists weren't the only ones who could throw things in this town. And her acting stint as the leader of an alien invasion had required many hours of study under the best marksmanship teacher in L.A.

  Her aim was really, really good.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  GABE DROVE his brother's truck through the town streets maneuvering with great care. The truck had been thoroughly restored, but it was still a vintage automobile. Even cautious attempts at acceleration were greeted with sudden and energetic convulsions. At last, he turned into the right street and saw Holly Hagen's minivan backing out of the Hunt driveway.

  The minivan seemed to be the only car in the street, which meant that his big surprise wasn't here yet. He drummed his fingers impatiently on the worn leather steering wheel. Should he stay in the car? No, if he did, she'd almost certainly bolt. He parked the truck, waited for the engine to shudder itself to sleep, and got out.

  He sighed at the sight of a pile of boxes on the porch. He'd specifically told Elizabeth to leave the lifting to him, but she had to do things her way, didn't she? He started to load the boxes on the truck and was relieved to find that they weren't that heavy. They probably contained Cole's clothes, sweatpants, jeans, superhero T-shirts, and those little vests with the weird little pockets that he often wore.

  Elizabeth came out of the house with a big trash bag and an even bigger frown on her face. She strode purposefully, glaring at him from behind the dark plastic.

  He grabbed the bag from her and scowled back at her. "I told you not to carry anything heavy."

  She didn't let go. Her back straightened and her frown deepened. In spite of her anger, she looked lovely in jeans and a faded T-shirt. Maybe Salvador was right. With angry eyes and her hair hastily pulled up in a messy bun, she really did look like a warrior princess, albeit not an alien one. At least the trash bag protected his spleen.

  "And I told you I would take care of this," she hissed, pulling on the bag.

  The bag toppled to the ground, and he caught it, barely, and put it in the truck. She was right. It wasn't heavy, which was good, because he wasn't sure how much weight Zach's wheezing wreck of a truck could take.

  He turned back to Elizabeth, who stood, muscles tensed, next to the truck. She seemed to be considering whether to jump in the truck, put it in reverse, and run him over.

  "Is that it?" he asked, trying to distract her.

  "Yes," she replied, brushing a stray hair out of her eyes. "You can drop them off and go on with your day. I'm sure you have vampires to raise, covens to congregate—" her eyes flashed with hostility, "—and friends to betray."

  "Actually, I'm a little busy with tentacles right now."

  Her eyes narrowed and her jaw tightened.

  "It's a joke, Elizabeth." He raised his hands defensively. "Just a joke."

  "Your whole plan is a joke."

  "But it's a joke that sells. Will you just hear me out?"

  "Oh, you want me to hear you out? Then maybe you should have invited me to the meeting. But you couldn't do that, right? I would have hammered some sense into the Town Council."

  Hammered was the correct word. Elizabeth wasn't subtle.

  "You'll understand once you see the finished product." He regretted the words as soon as he said them. He hadn't meant to sound so arrogant.

  "Understand?" Elizabeth's voice rose. "You're right, I don't understand. I don't understand why you think turning the town into a Halloween joke is good business. I don't understand why you couldn't be straight with me. And I don't understand how you got the town
council to go along with it. Did you even tell them that you're selling the cidery to a Prussian conglomerate?"

  "I'm not selling the cidery," he said between clenched teeth. "It wouldn't be good for the town and it wouldn't be good for the Germans either. They need a joint venture, not a new subsidiary. We'll do a quick test run on the product and once they see those numbers, they'll forget all about buying Haunted Orchard."

  His answer did not seem to mollify her. "I guess we'll see about that. But, as far as I'm concerned, you can take Cole's stuff to the dump and stay there with the rest of the garbage. Goodbye, Gabe." Her words rang out like a death sentence.

  A death sentence he was going to ignore.

  He headed for the porch. "Don't be ridiculous, Elizabeth. This isn't all of Cole's stuff. You're just trying to get rid of me." He stepped around her. "C'mon. Lead me to the rest of it."

  She pushed him out of the way, almost making him trip on the narrow walkway. "Don't you get it, Gabe?" she ground out, walking quickly toward the house. "I don't need, or want, your help."

  She aimed a final glare in his direction then stepped into the house, slamming the door behind her.

  Well, that was pretty final.

  She had a right to her anger. Cleaning her brother's room wasn't an easy task, physically or emotionally, and the news about his meeting with the Historical Preservation Committee didn't help. He'd been an asshole, no doubt, but then, he usually was where business was concerned.

  He should walk away, leave Caine to finalize the PRoVE deals, and return to Manhattan, where he could bury himself in work and forget all about Elizabeth Hunt.

  But he couldn't.

  He walked up to the door and pulled on the handle. The Hunt residence was pretty much exactly as he remembered it. Mrs. Hunt hadn't changed a thing, including, he noted, the faulty front door latch.

  He entered the house. The foyer and living room were as tidy as always, although the cream-colored sofa looked a fit worse for wear.