by Amy Garvey
He lifted the tray off the bed and let her take her cup of coffee before he set it on the floor. “Whatever works. So—let me know when you want to go back home. If you still think of the Prescott place as home.”
“I do.” Charlie took a few sips. “I’d rather go with you, though. After you’ve rested.”
He thumped his chest in a weak imitation of Tarzan. “Give me another twenty-four hours.”
“Take all the time you want. I’m still afraid that you’re a target somehow.”
He shook his head before he leaned back into a pile of pillows. “Maybe. Maybe not. The ghost didn’t attack me that last time in the kitchen, you know.”
“What? C’mon, Sam, I saw the blood. You were unconscious for a little while, too. What are you talking about?”
He looked at her a little sheepishly. “I—ah—sorta threw myself backward into the cabinets. Didn’t work out quite the way I planned.”
“What?” She stared at him incredulously.
“I did. Granted, I didn’t think before I did it that it actually was possible to knock yourself out. But, being a guy, I proved myself wrong.”
Charlie set the cup to one side. “You did that to get me to come here to Lillian’s house?”
He nodded. “Am I brilliant or what?”
“I feel really guilty.” She laughed. “I would have given in eventually.”
“Nah. You weren’t going to budge and I wasn’t up for more arguing. So ... boom.”
“Oh, Sam—”
“I couldn’t protect you if I wasn’t there, right? So it made sense. At the time.”
“You’re crazy.” Charlie wiggled closer to him, running her hands through his hair and checking for—exactly what, she wasn’t sure. Blood. Swelling.
“Thanks, nurse,” he whispered lasciviously.
“Why?”
“B’ful bouncin’ boobs ’n my face.” He’d latched onto a nipple. “Cures ever’fin.”
Charlie laughed and detached herself carefully. “You seem to be all right.”
He looked bereft. “No. I need another treatment. Just like that. Don’t ever get dressed, okay? I want you in a big bed like this one for—”
Her breath caught for a second and he gave her a worried look. What had he been about to say? Forever. For now. Oh, forget it, she told herself. He’s just being playful and you don’t have to take every minute you spend with him so seriously. She smiled at him. “Dibs on the shower. I’m getting up.”
He groaned, grabbing at her, but she eluded him. “Can I watch?” she heard him call over the running water.
“If you want to.”
She was under the warm, pulsing stream by the time he came. He swished the vinyl curtain partly aside just as she was blinking and wondering where the soap was.
In his hand.
“Allow me,” he murmured suavely.
Charlie gave him a dripping grin and turned around slowly, letting him do the honors. He seemed awfully happy to take it slow, washing her with both hands, squeezing out suds between his fingers as they slid over her skin, bending her over for an intimate and very tender wash when he’d finished with her from the waist up.
He threw down the bathmat and kneeled on it to lean in and soap her legs with worshipful, long strokes from thighs to ankles. The shower’s spray was getting his hair wet but he didn’t seem to care. The front of his jeans were wet, too, where they were pressing against the bathtub.
His fingers circled her ankle and she braced herself as he lifted her foot, and lavished attention on her toes. He did the other, then sat back on his haunches with a satisfied sigh, letting her rinse off while he just drank in the sight.
There was no missing his lusty grin or his huge hard-on, bigger than before.
“Look at you. Aren’t you uncomfortable in those wet jeans?” she said. Charlie squirted shampoo from a plastic cylinder into her cupped palm as she talked, rubbing it into her drenched hair.
His eyes tracked her breasts with boundless appreciation as they lifted and jiggled while she shampooed. He kept right on staring as he stood up, peeled off the jeans with some difficulty. Then he leaned forward to lick drops of water from her erect nipples, the shower spray bouncing off his back now.
She closed her eyes, letting the water sluice away the last of the shampoo. Getting clean and getting licked at the same time was a very nice feeling. In another few seconds, Sam’s big naked body was next to hers in the shower, and he was hugging her, sliding his body against hers in a tight caress. He turned so that she turned, leaving her standing under the pulsing shower, then kneeling himself in the other part of the tub.
Knowingly, Charlie stepped her feet a little apart, then reached down and opened herself for him with her fingers. Again he applied his magic tongue to her most sensitive flesh, giving her a squeaky-clean orgasm in a minute, then struggling up to kiss her and caress her all over.
She returned the favor with her hand and the soft soap, and he got off in seconds, spurting hotly over her circling fingers as he moaned against her wet hair, gripping her shoulders to keep his balance.
They stood there for a little while, letting the wonderful feelings swirl and ebb around their gleaming bodies, and then she shut off the spray.
He threw his head back and for a moment she thought he was going to roar. But he didn’t—he was just shaking his hair to get some of the water out, getting drops in her face.
“Silly—step out and I’ll towel you off,” she said.
“Only if you let me do the same to you.”
She had to laugh. “Deal.”
The soft, dry scrubbing he gave her was nearly as pleasurable as the rest. God, she thought, as he used a corner to even dry the whorls in her outer ears, getting spectacularly laid and loved up and pampered to the max had a way of making meaningless worries disappear. A lot of things that had been on her mind just weren’t anymore. She struggled to remember what they were—oh yes. Had the ghosts inspired them and was he capable of commitment and how did you know when love was real? Those things. Why couldn’t she think? Because he’d wrapped the towel sarong-style around her bare ass and was rubbing it briskly back and forth.
“You have to go away more,” she said when she stopped laughing. “It’s so great when you come back.”
“Whatever you say,” Sam murmured, pulling her to him with the towel. “That really could work, you know.”
Chapter Sixteen
Charlie opened the front door to the Prescott house—her house, she reminded herself—and lingered on the doorsill. The air was still and warm. She’d left the heat on and too many lights. Maybe it was kind of ridiculous to think that a package of 75-watt bulbs could keep supernatural emanations at bay, but it was no more ridiculous than garlic for werewolves.
Feeling a tad braver, she went inside. Sam came up the stairs behind her. “Wait for me,” he called from the sidewalk.
“I did. I got bored,” she called back.
His booted tread echoed in the quiet house once he was through the door and had shut it behind him.
“Everything looks about the same,” he said.
“You get to check out the spare room.”
Sam nodded resolutely. She was beginning to realize that he got off on being a hero, so long as he could wear his regular clothes: jeans, flannel shirt, boots, and parka. He thundered up the stairs. “Gotta let them know I’m coming,” he said over his shoulder to her.
“Sounds like a plan.” Charlie stood at the bottom of the stairs and waited. She never would’ve gone above the first floor if he hadn’t been with her. She listened to the floorboards creak, judging his location by the sound.
He seemed to be opening and shutting doors more noisily than was necessary. She was aware that he’d also looked into the room where her computer was. Good. She didn’t even want to switch that on unless he was standing right behind her.
To do what? she wondered. Smash a clenched fist through the monitor if the ghosts got frisky
and put on an X-rated show in it? Charlie smiled a little. Nothing could be better than the incredible sensuality of her hours alone with Sam. She looked up as he came back down the stairs. “Everything looks okay. But I still think you should stay out of the spare room.”
“Fine with me,” she agreed.
He gave her an appraising onceover. “Are you going to be okay by yourself?”
“Sam, you can’t babysit me. And I—we—can’t stay at Lillian’s indefinitely. Besides ...” She hesitated.
“What?”
“Don’t you have a place of your own to go back to?”
“Well, yeah. I sublet a place in Roxbury that belongs to a buddy of mine. But there’s nothing in it that I have to worry about. I don’t own anything worth stealing and I rent cars. It’s just me and my laptop, on the go. No kittycat. No fish tank. No plant, not even moss.”
She bit her lip. “So you really are a rolling stone.”
“Guess so,” he said. “But don’t look at me like it’s a character failing. For the work I do, it’s how I have to live. Not everyone gets to inherit an oceanfront house on Martha’s Vineyard, you know.”
His tone wasn’t sarcastic, just honest, but the remark still stung a little. Still, she had no right to judge how he lived and it was obvious he wasn’t attached to his apartment in any way, wherever it was.
“Right. Sorry if I sounded nosy.”
He kissed her on that part of her face. “But it’s a cute one.”
Sam walked through the downstairs room with even more energy. His stride was restless and his eyes were everywhere.
“What are you looking for?” she asked him.
“Not really anything. I was just thinking that the house could use a little, you know, Christmas cheer.”
“I keep trying to mull wine with spices and orange peel,” she said. “No one seems interested.”
“I didn’t mean the kind of cheer that comes in a bottle. I was thinking”—he waved his arm at the living room—“that you could get a pretty big tree in here. If you wanted to.”
“You mean like a Christmas tree?”
“No, a giant sequoia. Knock out the ceiling, knock out the floor. There’s plenty of room. Make a statement.”
He hugged her when she finally realized he was kidding—but not about the Christmas tree.
“I don’t have any decorations, Sam.”
“There must be some around here in boxes.”
She pressed her lips together and shook her head. “Uh-uh. I’m not poking through old stuff or crawling around in attics.”
“Okay, then we can go to one of those cute little Edgartown shops and buy new stuff. What do you say?”
Charlie thought it over. “Sure. We can pick up a tree stand at the hardware store and they probably have lights, too.”
“I draw the line at stringing cranberries,” he warned her. “I may be a New Englander, but I just don’t get what’s so freaking great about cranberries, and I mean eating them or anything else.”
“Lillian would be shocked to hear that, but I don’t care. But before we go, one more thing—”
“Say the word, Charlie.”
She took him by the hand. “Go upstairs with me and open all the doors. Show me there’s nothing there. And boot up my computer for me.”
“Not a problem.” He gave her hand a warm squeeze and led the way.
It was fun wandering around the hardware store and especially the shops, picking out ornaments. The selection was heavy on whales but what could you do. She chose glass bead garlands that looked easy to string, even for a couple of newbie tree-decorators like her and Sam.
She purchased clothespin dolls that were locally made and he picked out glass birds with shimmering tails. They both agreed on plain colored balls in assorted colors to fill out the bare spots and filled up a sailbag with it all, then went to Ed’s lot to pick out a tree.
Ed was a giant of a man, with a huge belly and a mustache trimmed with frost. He reminded her a lot of a walrus, especially when he slapped his giant nylon mittens together to keep his circulation going. She almost expected him to make that orking noise, and smiled at his blunt greeting.
“Hiya. Those just came in.” He waved a flipper—nylon mitten—at a row of tied-up pines with pointy, trembling tops.
“Thanks,” Sam said. “We’ll check ’em out.”
This felt so ... normal, she thought wonderingly. And nice. All she was doing was hanging on to Sam’s parka-clad arm, aware of the warm muscle underneath, and strolling up and down the rows of dark, deliciously fragrant pine trees, cut so recently that their trunks still oozed fresh sap.
“We have to pick the best one,” he told her. “And remember, there is only one best one. So take your time.”
Ed was busy with someone else and it didn’t matter if they took forever. Charlie was content.
She nudged him and pointed. “How about that one?”
“Perfect,” he said.
“You didn’t even look at it, Sam!”
“If you want it, then it’s perfect,” he said firmly.
This really could work, she thought to herself.
Ed dropped off the tree an hour later, pulling it out of the back of his truck and going back to the lot. It was getting closer to Christmas and business had picked up in the evening after they’d left.
Sam lugged it over the doorsill and plunked it down on the carpet.
“Not there,” she said.
“It’s going in the living room, right?”
“Yes. In a tree stand. You’re going to get the carpet full of needles and they’ll never come out.”
Sam made an exasperated noise and picked up the tree, throwing it over his shoulder. “Then where do you want it? In the bathtub?”
She realized she was being a trippy little fussbudget and ran to get the tree stand, putting it in the corner. “Bring it on,” she said.
Sam came over and held the trunk an inch over the positioning screws while she guided it down. “Does this remind you of anything?” he asked, spitting out a few pine needles with even less regard for the carpet than he’d shown before. But she was more forgiving, because eating tree wasn’t an improvement over eating humble pie.
“No, not at all,” she said innocently. “Okay, hold it there. An inch off the bottom now so it can get the water.”
“It’s officially dead, you know. The process of water uptake by capillary action and osmosis is no longer operative.”
“Is that going to be on the midterm? Is the tree straight? I can’t see from down here.”
“No,” he answered. “And yes to the second question. But I can’t see either. I’m dancing cheek to cheek with it.”
“Check when you step back. I almost have it. So why do they sell tree stands with reservoirs?” She turned the thick screws evenly on all sides.
“You done?”
“Yes.”
He stepped away from it. “Because it makes people feel better about cutting down trees,” he replied. He put his hands on his hips. “Hey, how about that—you got it right the first time. It’s perfectly straight.”
She crawled out from under. “Really? Not bad. Considering how bent we are.”
He extended a hand and pulled her up. “Good work, Charlie. Is this your first all-by-yourself tree?”
She nodded, looking at it with pride and rubbing a trace of sticky sap between her fingers. “Let’s decorate this baby.”
Sam went to get the sailbag with the ornaments. “Got any libations?”
“I could make fresh eggnog,” she answered from the kitchen.
“Too much work. Fake is fine.”
“Okay.” She opened the fridge and reached for the unopened quart behind the almost empty one. It was a second before she realized that it was not only open—the top had been carefully pinched to look like it wasn’t but almost empty, too.
Guess who. She was suddenly sure it was Daniel—just touching the eggnog carton had brought back
her feeling that he hadn’t been anything like the sober New Englanders around here. She could probably add bon vivant and mooch to the word dandy to describe him. Maybe even con man.
She took out both eggnog cartons, throwing them in the trash, noticing that she sensed nothing about Temperance from them and she now knew what Temperance looked like.
Beautiful. Passionate. And undoubtedly genuinely innocent as well. Maybe Daniel had introduced her to worldly pleasures. Maybe Cyrus Prescott hadn’t been wrong.
She stood stock still for a minute, her eyes closed, trying to sense something, anything about the female half of their ghostly visitors. In the vaguest possible way, she received a vibration that Temperance was all right. Somehow.
Charlie opened her eyes, feeling a little silly.
“Sorry. Looks like I’m out,” she called brightly. So Daniel had been raiding the refrigerator in her absence—and what was it with him and eggnog? Charlie thought to check the whiskey—that bottle was down to an inch or less.
“What else do you have?”
She pondered telling him about the midnight raid on the liquor—as usual, she somehow couldn’t imagine the culprit doing his worst in the day, and decided against it. She was not going to get hysterical or let the past interfere with the present. And that was that.
“How about a gin and tonic?” she called to Sam.
“God, I haven’t had one of those for years. I used to drink them in the summer, though.”
“They’re good any time, very refreshing.”
“Okay.”
Charlie went to the other cabinet and opened the door. Lillian liked a gin and tonic now and then, which was why she had the makings of them. The familiar green tank-style jug was full and none of the small tonics had been taken—there was a complete six-pack of squat, yellow-labeled bottles. Okay. So Daniel didn’t like gin or hadn’t found it.
Charlie went to the fruit bowl on the table and took out a lime to slice into quarters. She squeezed one in a glass for juicy flavor to counteract the tonic’s bitterness, and adding another for garnish when she’d put in the ice and the gin, finishing off with the bubbly tonic so as not to flatten it.
“Here you go,” she said, coming back into the living room. In her absence, Sam had managed to decorate exactly half of the tree with half of the ornaments.
