Ghosts of Boyfriends Past

by Vivi Andrews

  The sun hung lower in the sky, but he wasn’t ready to head back yet. He saw a narrow dirt path zigging inland and hopped down off the boardwalk to follow it, moving faster now, driven by frustration.

  Not a single useable interview today—at least not for the story he was actually chasing. He’d officially lost his mojo.

  He was usually good at interviewing people. That was his thing. Connecting to people, earning their stories, their trust and the truth as they knew it. But recently he hadn’t been able to engage with his interview subjects the way he used to. He felt disconnected from everyone, like he’d heard so many stories he’d lost sight of his own.

  When his work had begun to suffer and he’d stopped trusting his gut, his editor had sent him out here hoping something about the bizarre story or the unique location would wake him up. Mark had expected to sleepwalk through another assignment—no challenge, no intrigue and no life behind the words he slapped onto the page.

  If nothing else, Parish Island and Biz Marks had defied his expectations.

  Mark followed the sound of the surf up over a small hill, the coarse grass that grew through the sand here snagging his jeans. He stopped at the crest of the hill, the wide grey expanse of the ocean spread out in front of him. Behind him the winter sunset colored the sky, but the eastern horizon was already navy, tipping toward black. It was cold, windy—more the setting for an adaptation of Wuthering Heights than a beach vacation. Even knowing this beach would be packed with holiday crowds in the summer months, his chest still tightened with an intense feeling of isolation. It looked like the kind of place no human had ever walked before—and never would. Desolate and inhospitable.

  Like he needed a setting like this to remind him how alone he was.

  Feeling perversely drawn to the unforgiving scenery, Mark trudged down the hill to where the ragged grass gave way to sand and continued toward the shoreline. After two steps tiny grains snuck into his shoes, but it was too cold to take them off. Hardly skinny-dipping weather.

  There were no lights on this part of the island—a novelty for a city guy like him—and the sky was darkening by the second, which explained why he almost didn’t see her.

  Just a pale flash of leg first. A slim, graceful arm. The figure standing knee-deep in the shore break bent and swayed, twisted and spun.

  At first he didn’t recognize her. She was too wild, too unrestrained to be the repressive woman in the ugly grey sweater he’d met earlier in Charmed, I’m Sure. The Biz Marks he’d met this morning would never dance barefoot in freezing water at sunset. That woman had seemed to want nothing more than to fade into the scenery. This one was a force of nature.

  Her black curls corkscrewed madly in every direction, held into some semblance of order by the bright purple scarf she’d tied around them. A multicolored shawl caught the wind, arching and twisting around her like a playful sail.

  Who was this woman and what had she done with Biz Marks?

  Intrigued didn’t begin to cover it. He felt like something had shifted inside him, a misaligned gear dropping neatly back into place at the sight of her.

  Mark started down the beach. He had a thousand questions for her about her lost loves, but all of them leaked right out of his brain as he grew closer to her.

  “I hear you’re the one to see about falling in love.”

  He had to shout over the wind and waves, but he knew Biz heard him. She whipped around, eyes wide, cheeks flushed. For a long moment they simply stared at one another, a water nymph and a mortal man.

  Then a wave smacked into the backs of her knees and Biz stumbled forward, rushing out of the water, her expression darkening with every step away from the surf.

  Chapter Five—Beach Blanket Bingo

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing here?”

  Mark slowly arched an eyebrow, his gobsmacked expression fading into the cocky one she was coming to recognize as his game face. “I didn’t realize this was a private beach.”

  It wasn’t, damn it, but that didn’t give him the right to just come on down here whenever he felt like it. Okay, yes, it technically gave him that right, but that was beside the point. The point was that she didn’t want him here. This was her place. The one place she could forget about the curse and let her hair down—both literally and figuratively.

  She’d spent all day paging through spells to save his damn life. She’d needed a break—from the curse and, yes, from the ever-present ghosts.

  How dare he intrude on the place where she could be completely herself? She’d agreed to talk to him tomorrow, hadn’t she? Did he really have to invade her turf? Even if it wasn’t technically her turf.

  “It isn’t private,” she admitted grudgingly, slogging through the cold sand back toward the shoes she’d left to one side of the path. “What do you want?”

  “Maybe I just want a matchmaker. How do I sign up for some lovin’ around here?”

  Intellectually, she knew he was asking to be hooked up—he’d probably heard she was the Parish Island version of eHarmony—but her hormones reacted like he’d just propositioned her. Suddenly the cold beach didn’t feel so chilly. Biz wrapped her shawl tightly around herself, wishing she had one of her bulky sweaters to keep him at bay. “I don’t do that anymore.”

  She turned to face the last traces of the sunset, grimacing that she’d missed it. The horizon was greying, stars already beginning to poke out in the east.

  Biz turned and started toward the path away from the beach, more because she felt like she should than due to any real desire to get away from Mark Ellison. He seemed to be in an oddly contemplative mode—retorting just as cleverly as ever, but with long pauses between his comments, like he couldn’t help being sucked in by the lazy rhythm of the waves and the soft seduction of the wind.

  She’d only moved a few feet when he called after her.

  “You don’t have to go. I didn’t mean to run you off.” She could just make out his silhouette as he looked out to sea and then back to face her. “If we can’t share this big beach, I should be the one to leave.”

  His words made her feel foolish. Even knowing the curse was real, it still seemed cowardly to cut and run just because they were on the same beach. And it was getting darker by the second. He couldn’t fall in love with her if he couldn’t see her, right?

  Biz frowned. Why was she rationalizing this? Did she really want to stay here with him? Why? Because her neatly ordered all-control-all-the-time life was beginning to make her insane? Because staying with him, taking that risk, no matter how small, felt like the first real thing she’d done all year?

  She didn’t know him—except that he was insanely hot, clever and persistent as all hell—so why would she want to spend time with him? Especially knowing it would put him at risk.

  He was interesting, she admitted to herself. Like the Chinese curse, may you live in interesting times definition of interesting. Did she want to live in interesting times? A tide of guilt swam up—that would make the curse even more her fault.

  “I’ll go,” Mark said. She’d waited too long to speak. He started toward the path.

  “No. We can both stay.” Had those words come out of her mouth?

  Mark didn’t speak, but she thought she saw him nod. He settled himself down on the sand, staring out toward the black water. Biz dropped to sit beside him—keeping a healthy two yards between them. They sat in silence, the minutes stretching out filled by nothing but the sounds of wind and sea. It was soothing, companionable.

  Biz hadn’t simply relaxed with anyone in years. She hadn’t relaxed period. Every second was tense with the awareness of the curse, but tonight, here, she felt like she’d been given a timeout. A few minutes of respite from the harrowing game.

  “I’m not really looking for a matchmaker,” Mark said finally, almost as if he was speaking to himself.

  “No?”

  “Bad timing. My life is too complicated for a girlfriend right now.”

  Biz
snorted.

  Mark’s clothing rustled as he turned toward her. “That’s funny?”

  “Just sounds like an excuse to me.”

  “Newspapers are dropping like flies. If the Gazette goes under, I could have to move God knows where. I can’t ask a woman to get involved with me, knowing that.”

  “Ah, I see, so it’s impossible to consider that she might love you enough to go with you or that you might love her enough to look for a job that wasn’t in such an unstable field?”

  “It just isn’t the right time for me.”

  “What makes you think you get to be the one to decide the time? I bet you’re one of those guys who thinks you can go after true love the same way you would go after a story. Sometimes it takes more than dogged determination. Don’t mock Fate. She might not give you a second chance.”

  Or a third chance…or a fourth. Biz knew from personal experience what a bitch Fate could be.

  “Fate’s just going to have to accept that I run my own life,” Mark insisted. “I’m not going to fall in love just to break up again.”

  Biz heard something in his voice that she knew all too well. Control. The same rigid control she tried to impose over her own love life lately. But as someone who’d made a study of falling in love, she knew nothing could kill romance faster than trying to micromanage when and how it happened.

  Love was a leap, a risk. It took courage and trust and faith. Without that risk, the wild, uncontrolled feeling, you couldn’t get the reward of falling into the arms of love.

  “You’re cutting yourself off from a lot of possibilities by trying to control everything,” Biz said, since that was exactly what she was desperately trying to do. Cut off the flow of romantic opportunities.

  “You’re saying I should seize the day, huh?” Suddenly his voice was much closer, seductive and warm. He stretched across the sand separating them.

  “No.” Biz scrambled to her feet. God, what had she been thinking? What had she been saying? Had she just tried to talk him into being open to love? Right when the curse was most likely to put him in the ground if he gave in to it? “I didn’t mean— I— That is, you— Crap. I have to go.”

  She bolted up the beach toward the path she could’ve found blindfolded—which was helpful considering the night was so dark she might as well have been. She didn’t look back. Mark Ellison was on his own.

  He hadn’t been about to kiss her, had he? Surely that wasn’t why he’d leaned like that. God, it had been forever since she’d been kissed. She missed kissing. The sweet soft ones. The tentative new ones. The steamy, hot, passionate ones.

  Images of kisses teased her brain—and in each fantasy it was the same pair of lips pressing and brushing and nibbling against hers. The same dimpled smile she saw in her mind’s eye. Her stomach swooped giddily.

  Far too giddily. This fizzy, dippy feeling had to be the curse. It wasn’t normal. Sure, she hadn’t felt this way about the others, but that didn’t mean the curse wasn’t evolving to include this sizzling chemistry. Biz shuddered. She’d be even more helpless against it now.

  The counterspell. She had to focus on the counterspell.

  She heard someone calling after her from the direction of the beach. Biz ran like hell.

  Chapter Six—Gingerbread Emasculation

  Mark opened his eyes the next morning and was nearly blinded by the cuteness. His room at the Shoreview Guesthouse was a Victorian virgin’s fantasy. Lace doilies, pastel paisley and gingerbread trim filled every corner of his vision, so frilly and twee he felt his testosterone count dropping by the second.

  Admittedly, the first room he’d been assigned had been decorated with a more masculine flair, but switching to this eyesore and sleeping with his feet poking through the brass footboard was worth it for the view.

  Mark rolled out of bed and faced the window.

  His first room had looked out over the Atlantic, prime beachfront scenery even when the ocean was grey and sullen in a winter pout. This one aimed straight across the street. Straight at the tall, narrow, slightly rundown Victorian that housed Charmed, I’m Sure, Biz’s odd little curio shop.

  The house had seen better days. The paint was so peeled it had reached a point of artful shabbiness. Siding tilted at precarious angles, and from his window view he could see a distinct sagging to the archway over the front door. The entire place made his hands itch for a hammer.

  Biz obviously needed a man in her life, if only for maintenance purposes. Not that he was volunteering. It wasn’t his fault she was single. Maybe if she stopped going all praying mantis on all the men she met, her house wouldn’t make him twitch with suppressed do-it-yourself renovation impulses.

  Not to mention other impulses. Impulses that had filled his dreams with all-too-erotic images. Impulses she clearly didn’t welcome given the speed she’d fled the beach, though he could have sworn there was something inviting, almost challenging in her voice before she bolted.

  The curtains on the upstairs windows were all shut tight. Mark tried looking through the frosted glass of the shop’s single window, but couldn’t see so much as a silhouette. But that hadn’t stopped him looking.

  He was investigating her. He certainly wasn’t stalking and he definitely wasn’t pining. Gazing at her window like a puppy. Wondering if she was inside, perhaps even looking out as he was looking in, reliving every word she’d said…

  Their conversation last night haunted him. Was that how she drew in her victims? She couldn’t possibly have planned their meeting on the beach, but she’d known exactly what to say to get under his skin. He told himself that he had only moved in for a kiss because he wanted her to think he was an ideal victim so he could get close to her.

  It certainly wasn’t because he actually wanted to get close to her.

  He wasn’t obsessed. His inability to look away from any of the windows that might be hers was just a function of the fact that he’d spent the last twenty hours talking of nothing else. And the conversations certainly hadn’t answered all his questions about her. If anything he was more confused than ever.

  It all circled around Biz.

  He just couldn’t get a good read on her. One second she was brash and smart-mouthed, only to turn into a flustered, stammering middle-schooler at her first dance five seconds later. Her eyes shifted away from his every time she smiled, as if she didn’t want to admit he’d been able to make her grin, but when she spoke to him she met his eyes squarely, without a trace of deception. She was by turns open and warm, then closed off with a distant, hands-off reserve.

  Mark hadn’t been able to play her because he hadn’t known from one second to the next which version of Biz Marks he was going to be talking to.

  And the most disconcerting thing was how much he had liked it. She made him feel off balance in a way that challenged a part of him that had gone to sleep.

  As if conjured by his thoughts, the “witch” of Parish Island stepped onto the sidewalk and turned to lock the door to Charmed, I’m Sure behind her. Her hair was looser this morning, a scraggly knot at the base of her skull, and her clothing was looser too—if possible even more hideously unappealing than her outfit from yesterday morning.

  He found himself longing for the flowing dress she’d worn last night, the way it moved with her as if it couldn’t stop touching her. He’d envied that dress.

  Mark watched avidly, tracking her as she wandered up the quiet street, waving to someone he couldn’t see before slipping inside the small restaurant down the road.

  He had two alternatives—stick around for Mrs. Kent’s legendary scones and wait until two for his meeting with Biz like a good boy. Or throw on some clothes, run down the street and catch her with her guard down.

  Last night his own guard had been down. She’d slipped under his skin, and he’d lost any headway he might have had.

  He could use the advantage. He’d need the upper hand if he wanted to trick a confession out of the cagey Black Widow who had all of Parish Isla
nd fooled.

  She’d almost fooled him. Last night…he hadn’t been about to kiss her. He hadn’t. But the fact that the idea had even crossed his mind…

  Mark dug into his overnight bag, pulling out his one clean shirt and fresh boxers.

  He was a professional, and there was definitely a story here.

  He just needed to keep his head on straight until he had it.

  Chapter Seven—Dine and Dish

  Biz staggered into Blanchard’s feeling three-quarters dead. She’d spent the better part of the night squinting at cramped, faded text, and all she had to show for it was a whopping headache and a nasty case of eyestrain.

  The boys had been nothing but helpful in her quest for a counterspell—pulling down books from the top shelf, bringing her herbal tea and providing soothing background music—but still she’d found bupkis. A great big nada.

  She’d fallen into bed around three, drained but too demoralized to sleep. And tormented by memories of wind and sand and dimpled charm every time she closed her eyes.

  When Gillian called at dawn and suggested they meet for breakfast so she could give her report on the reporter, Biz rolled her sleep-deprived self out of bed and dragged herself the three blocks to the island’s only year-round eatery.

  She needed a dose of good news…and a massive helping of Blanche’s famous artery-clogging Double-Stuft French Toast.

  Blanchard’s was a Parish Island institution.

  Decades before Brangelina and TomKat began disgusting everyone with their cutesy codependence, Blanche and Richard Kinneson moved to the island from Topeka and opened up Blanchard’s, a hole-in-the-wall diner with five-star cuisine and a glorious patio overlooking the beach. Blanche ruled the kitchen during breakfast and lunch, Rich during the dinner rush, and their five kids grew up glowering sullenly at customers over order pads and running the front of the house.