by Hope Ramsay
“That’s going to be a big problem,” Zeph said under his breath as he turned off his flashlight.
“You think the preacher is a problem? What the hell is that?” Mr. Raintree pointed at the shredded wallpaper. “And how the hell did you get in here?”
“I told you, Mr. Gabe, I walked in through the front door. It wasn’t locked.”
“Mr. Raintree, I—” Jenny began.
Her boarder turned toward her, his dark eyes sparking with ire. “For God’s sake, call me… Oh, my God, you’re bleeding.”
Mr. Raintree stooped and picked up a napkin from the broken china at his feet, and before she could tell him not to, he pressed it into the palm of her hand and applied pressure.
She watched the blood soak into the fibers of her mother’s table linen, and her composure broke. Everything was destroyed: the china, the table, the linen, the dinner, and the handsome man she didn’t care much about except in theory. A big, unwanted sob bubbled up from her insides. On a wave of sorrow she cried, “Oh, my beautiful dream.”
The gash in Jenny’s hand wasn’t as bad as Gabe first thought. But his heart lurched when he got a good look at her face, flecked with scratches from flying debris. He knew now that he hadn’t misplaced his trust. She wasn’t laying traps for him. She wasn’t some crazy who wanted to mess with his mind.
She was the victim here. Someone was messing with her.
Her lower lip began to tremble, and her eyes watered up. When the sob came, Gabe was ready.
She fell against his chest, and he closed his arms around her. She was so tiny, and she trembled as she cried, like a sparrow in a cage. He tucked her head under his chin and buried his nose in her lustrous hair.
She smelled like lavender, old-fashioned and sweet and flowery. He held her close and studied the gashes on the wall. Someone might have been able to rip that wallpaper and hide it with the cabinet. But Gabe couldn’t explain the unnatural way the chicken had flown across the table. Or how a china cabinet that big could topple over without someone pushing it.
None of this was adding up to anything even remotely rational.
So he stopped trying to figure it out and just drank in her scent, and let himself feel relief knowing that she was as good and kind and rational as he had hoped and believed.
When Jenny’s sobs had dwindled to mere hiccups, he whispered, “Do you have a first-aid kit?”
She nodded like a little girl. “In the kitchen,” she said against his shirt.
“C’mon, I need to take a better look at your hand.”
She stepped away from him, her eyes puffy and her nose red. He draped his arm around her shoulders and helped guide her through the mess on the floor.
Zeph was waiting for them, sitting on one of the kitchen stools with Bear at his feet, fast asleep. Zeph must have rifled through her cabinets because he had Jenny’s first-aid kit out and opened on the center island counter.
“Why are you here?” Gabe asked the moment Zeph rose from the stool and helped Jenny to sit down. “Were you spying on us?”
The old man took a little step back. “I reckon you might look at it that way. I was just keeping watch is all.”
“Keeping watch for what?” Gabe demanded as he took hold of Jenny’s hand and unwrapped the bloody napkin. Jenny’s wound had pretty much stopped bleeding. It wasn’t a bad cut, but Gabe felt responsible in some way he couldn’t quite articulate.
“I was keeping an eye on the ghost. I was worried something like this might happen. He’s got his moods, the ghost does.”
Gabe and Jenny raised their gazes in near unison. “Ghost?”
“Mr. Gabe, I know you don’t believe in haunts, but you’re just going to have to amend your believing. And besides, the ghost has been haunting you for days. I thought you would have figured that out by now.”
“I’ve been haunted?” Gabe broke open a packet of antiseptic to clean Jenny’s wound.
“Of course you have.”
“So you’re trying to tell me that the deleted computer files and the unexplained change in the save date for Final Fantasy have all been the work of a ghost.”
“I am. And what happened tonight, too. The thing is, the ghost is usually pretty quiet unless he takes a dislike to something. Then he lets you know. Sometimes in a big way.”
“Like clawing the wallpaper from the wall? Like deleting my novel from my hard drive?”
“Yes, like that. I reckon he doesn’t like your book very much. And he’s pretty upset about the wallpaper.”
Jenny suddenly straightened her shoulders and glared at Zeph. “What’s wrong with the wallpaper?”
“Well, ma’am, the ghost thinks flowers belong in the garden.”
Jenny blinked at Zeph for a full fifteen seconds, her hazel eyes growing bigger with each tick of the clock. “Oh, my goodness, he tried to tell me that the very first night.”
“What?” Zeph and Gabe said in near unison.
“I had a dream. I told you about it. Well, I told you about part of it. But in the beginning of the dream, I was putting up wallpaper, and the flowers started to dance and they danced right out into the garden and I followed them. And there was a voice, and he sort of suggested that flowers belong in the yard and a big dog was coming my way, and then the next day Bear arrived.”
“You didn’t tell me about the wallpaper,” Gabe said.
“I didn’t think it was important. I thought the open window was important. And of course, I thought Bear belonged to me because of that dream. And that was just silly, because anyone can see that he belongs to you.”
Gabe applied antiseptic ointment to the gash on her palm. He was trying hard not to notice her hands. They were long-fingered and nimble. The nails were plain and well-shaped. Truth to tell, he was trying to get that moment when she covered him with her body out of his mind, too. She was brave, his little sparrow.
“The ghost intended that dog for you, Miz Jenny,” Zeph said, pulling Gabe away from his thoughts.
He looked up. Zeph had moved to the back door.
“How do you know the dog was meant for Jenny?” Gabe asked.
“Because he attracts strays.”
“What? Who? The ghost?”
Zeph shrugged one shoulder and then started talking real fast. “I know what everyone says about animals and haunts, but this particular haunt doesn’t scare the critters away. They come to him whenever they need help. And it’s my penance to help them find new homes. The ghost tells me what to do. And the ghost intended that big ol’ dog for Miz Jenny, not for you, Mr. Gabe. That might be why he’s a little annoyed at you right now. I don’t think he meant to hurt anyone tonight. He’s just frustrated about the house and about… well, other things. He’s not a vicious ghost. Really he’s not.”
“If he’s not, then why the hell have you been trying to get Jenny and me to leave? You know how this looks, Zeph, don’t you? It looks like you might have created the appearance of a ghost, just to scare us. That would be way more rational than believing in actual ghosts.”
“I didn’t do any such thing. And if you thought about it, Mr. Gabe, you’d realize that it’s not me or Miz Jenny trying to fool you. It’s just a ghost trying to get your attention.
“And as for wanting y’all to leave, well, it’s just that I didn’t want y’all to be haunted. It’s not easy. It requires a lot of work. And you can’t tell folks about it because, if you do, they’ll think you’re crazier than a loon, which is exactly what you’re thinking about me right this minute, isn’t it?”
Zeph stood still for half a minute staring at Gabe, and Gabe stared back. He had faced this situation before. Zeph was trying to make him believe that he was rational. And he wanted to believe Zeph, but he knew better.
Zeph must have known he’d lost the battle, because he turned on his boot heel and was halfway out the door. Jenny called him back. “Wait, Zeph, is the ghost Luke?”
Her words scorched Gabe right down to his soul. Was it possible that b
oth of them were trying to drive him insane?
Zeph turned, his big, brown eyes wide. “Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry, Mr. Gabe, you should never have come back here.” He turned and headed out into the darkness, where he dematerialized into the woods as if he were a ghost himself.
“You don’t believe what he just said,” Gabe said.
“I think I do. And that scares me. Because if I really have a malicious ghost then I’m not going to be able to open the inn. And I have everything invested in this place. I can’t afford to fail.”
“I’ll buy back the house and the furnishings, Jenny. You don’t—”
“No!” She folded her arms across her chest. “No, I’m not leaving.” She looked up at the ceiling. “You hear that, ghost, I’m not going. And if you are the ghost of Luke Raintree, then I am so disappointed in you, young man. I won’t tolerate temper tantrums in my house. Is that absolutely clear?”
“You sound like Mrs. Abernathy, my tenth-grade math teacher,” Gabe said.
She turned her hazel eyes on him. “That makes perfect sense, because before I bought this house, I was a tenth-grade math teacher.”
Gabe had to laugh. If she was trying to con him, then she was one heck of a good actor, because no one could fake that schoolteacher demeanor. And knowing that she’d been a teacher in a former life freed him in some strange way. The empty place inside seemed a tiny bit smaller for it.
He believed in Jenny. His belief in ghosts would have to await further evidence. Because there was a rational explanation for what had happened tonight.
“You don’t believe there’s a ghost, do you?” she said.
“No.”
“If it isn’t a ghost, then someone is playing tricks on us, and they aren’t very nice tricks. The funny thing is that I’m less frightened by the idea of a ghost throwing a temper tantrum than I am by the alternative. Besides, how do you explain why I felt the touch of an ice-cold hand on my wrist while I was carving the chicken?”
“Someone touched you?”
“Not someone, something, some force. It threw the chicken across the table. I know that sounds nuts. And you’ll probably choose to think that I threw the chicken at Reverend Lake because he was behaving like a total jerk. But I would never have done anything that would have destroyed Mother’s china and furniture.” Her voice wavered, and there wasn’t anything fake about the emotion she was showing.
He finished tying off the ends of a bandage he’d wrapped around her hand. And then, for reasons he didn’t wish to examine too closely, he lowered his head and pressed a small kiss to her palm.
She gasped. And desire swept through him like a coastal hurricane. He raised his head and looked into her face. “Did I hurt you?”
“No.” She breathed the word.
He cradled her hands in both of his. “You saved my life tonight.” Of this he was entirely certain.
“No, I didn’t. I’m sure you would have been all right. If the ghost is your brother, surely he had no reason to hurt you. He just hated Mother’s dining room set and the magnolia wallpaper.” Her last words came out in a watery voice, and tears overflowed her eyes.
He brushed them from her cheek. “Whatever the reason, I am in your debt. It is one of the few debts that doesn’t burden me in the least.” He stopped, his voice becoming thick.
“You’re crazy, Mr. Raintree, there is no—”
He pressed his finger across her lips. “Perhaps I am crazy, because I want to believe there is a ghost here. It would be so simple, so uncomplicated. And the name is Gabe.”
“Gabe,” she whispered when he removed his finger. He caught his own name on her lips as he leaned in for one, short kiss.
CHAPTER
12
That night Jenny dreamed she was in a canoe paddling on the Edisto River after a spring rain. The current was swift, and she was all alone in the canoe, trying to reach the riverbank where The Jonquil House stood. A man in black waited on the porch for her. Every now and again he would wave, and a feeling of pure joy filled her. But the current was too swift. The best she could manage by paddling with all her might was to stand still in the rushing water.
When she finally awoke from her fretful sleep, the sun was already well up in the sky. She’d overslept. She checked her bedside clock. It was nine o’clock.
She must have slept right through her alarm, which was unusual. She usually woke up before it sounded. She’d spent her life teaching high school, and classes started promptly at eight, and early-bird math tutoring at seven. So she’d been getting up at 0-dark-thirty for years. She’d lost the ability to sleep in.
She picked up the clock and quickly discovered that the alarm had been reset to 11:00 a.m. She had no explanation for this, except that the ghost was a pain in the backside and ought to be taken out to the woodshed and disciplined the old-fashioned way. Not that she was a big fan of corporal punishment, but really, the ghost had destroyed Mother’s china.
She knew it was completely insane to believe that a ghost was responsible for what had happened last night, but she had no other rational explanation. Mr. Raintree—Gabe—was ready to blame Zeph for everything, but Zeph hadn’t been in the room when the chicken took flight. And Mr. Raintree hadn’t felt the grip of that icy hand on his wrist.
Jenny was a math and science teacher. She was a skeptic of the highest order. But she truly believed there was something supernatural going on at The Jonquil House. Of course, she wasn’t ready to call up the Travel Channel yet and make a play to have The Jonquil House on Most Haunted USA. She had a feeling that might attract exactly the wrong kind of customer.
Just then she remembered with a start that Nita, Rocky, and Savannah were scheduled to drop by at ten o’clock to talk about the library fund-raiser. She had foolishly offered to host the meeting and to make them muffins. She rolled out of bed and hit the shower at a dead run.
Ten minutes later, it occurred to her as she was pulling on a pair of jeans and a sweater that she not only didn’t have muffins, but she didn’t have a dining room table, either. She would have to entertain them in the living room.
And she was worried about the questions they were sure to ask about the events of the previous evening. It was nine o’clock in Last Chance, South Carolina, the gossip capital of the world. It was a surefire bet that everyone in town knew Reverend Lake had been attacked by a flying chicken.
In fact, it was kind of amazing that no one had called her yet to get all the juicy details. She picked up her cell phone and discovered that she was wrong. People had been calling since six in the morning. She had no less than ten messages from Sabina, alone, but somehow her phone had been put into silent mode. She had no recollection of having done that herself.
She looked up at the ceiling. “You owe me, ghost,” she muttered. “I am not going to be turned out of this house. Not by you and not by—”
She didn’t say his name. She feared Gabe more than the ghost. Gabe made her body sing. Gabe made her yearn for things she was supposed to be giving up because she could never have them.
She wasn’t going to be a fool for love again.
Her dream last night was easy to interpret. She was going to drown in a flooding river if she let Gabe’s little peck on the mouth run away with her imagination, or, God forbid, her heart.
She hurried downstairs, intent on making it to the kitchen and starting some coffee. She prayed that the Library Committee would be late, but she had a feeling that, with Nita Wills involved, they would be punctual.
Which meant she had exactly three minutes to get the coffee on. She rushed down the hallway but skidded to a stop when she got to the dining room archway.
Zeph and Gabe were working together, righting the china cabinet. It was banged and scratched, and its broken arch pediment was literally busted into three big pieces and a bunch of large splinters.
The men set the big cabinet back on its feet against the wall, hiding the torn wallpaper. The wood was scratched, but it looked as i
f it might be salvaged. The dining room table, not so much. There was an enormous dent in the wood at one end, and two of the legs had broken. It listed on its two good legs in the middle of the room. Several of the chairs had sustained damage as well. Jenny’s throat tightened. She’d been dreaming of the day that she could entertain people in a room like this, and now it was an utter shambles.
She was so angry she wanted to cry and cuss at the same time. But she held her tongue and cleared her throat, and the two men turned toward her. “I’m glad the two of you have made peace. And Mr. Raintree, uh, Gabe, I see your ankle is feeling better.”
He was wearing his Harvard sweatshirt and a pair of jeans that had to be at least ten years old. His dark hair looked as if he’d just rolled out of bed, and his five o’clock shadow had turned into a two-day stubble. He certainly didn’t look like a man who was scheduled to meet with the committee. But then she doubted that he gave a rat’s behind about the Library Committee. He’d probably forgotten all about it.
Which made his current actions in her dining room and his thoughtfulness last night all the more extraordinary. He’d carried dishes from the kitchen to the table. He’d cared for her hand last night. And now he was trying to fix the damage. Knowing he cared was kind of seductive, actually. She was also nonplussed at her reaction to this small bit of kindness.
She was a fool and an idiot. She needed to stop right now.
“Miz Jenny,” Zeph said, “I am so sorry about what happened last night. But your momma’s table and cabinet can be fixed, and I’d be obliged if you let me work on them. I reckon you know I have a way with wood.”
She did know that. Savannah had hired him to restore the lobby of The Kismet, and he’d done a remarkable job. She turned her gaze on Mr. Raintree, who was scowling a little bit. She knew his opinion. He didn’t believe in the ghost, and he was ready to blame Zeph for everything.
Well, he was wrong. And she decided right then and there to believe Zeph’s story about the ghost of Luke Raintree.
