Charon's Crossing (A Paranormal Romantic Suspense Novel) (36 page)

Because her unwanted and unwelcome ghost had screwed up her head, that was why.

She turned the ignition key, shot the car into a tottering U-turn, and headed back to Charon's Crossing and a final showdown.

* * *

By the time she reached the house, her anger had turned to sizzling rage.

She parked, slammed her way out of the car, and marched into the foyer.

"Matthew?" she yelled. Her keys clinked as she tossed them onto a table. "Matthew, where are you?"

She stalked into the drawing room, then into the library. Both rooms were empty.

"Dammit, Matthew, show yourself!"

Were they going to play games? Jaw set, Kathryn marched into the kitchen. There was a shortwave-band radio over the stove. She had no idea if it worked but now she switched it on, hoping against hope it would play and fill the mocking silence!

Static hissed from the speaker. She fooled with the dial, sweeping past a station playing reggae and another playing tangos until she picked up some station in the midst of a commercial.

"...from sunny St. George on Grenada," a booming voice said, "your favorite station playing nothing but the best of the oldies."

The best of the oldies. That, plus an afternoon of keeping busy until the estimable captain decided to show himself, should do the trick. Kathryn filled the sink with hot, sudsy water. Then she took the coffee pot from the stove, tossed the grounds into the garbage can, and dumped the pot into the sink.

The fruit salad she'd prepared had begun to wilt in its bowl and it went into the trash, too. It was a waste of perfectly good food, yet another reminder of what a mess the weekend had turned out to be, courtesy of Captain Matthew McDowell. The pantry and refrigerator were full of still more stuff, butter and eggs and all kinds of goodies, stuff she'd never use with Jason gone.

Well, at least one thing had come out of his visit. He was right about not trying to cover up the fact that the house was haunted. The right buyer would probably lap up the tale of a man who'd been so in love he'd given up his life for a woman.

A woman who had not deserved him.

Kathryn made a face.

"Oh, stop it," she muttered. She snatched up the coffee mug she'd been drinking from hours before and lifted it to her lips. The coffee was cold and bitter, and she shuddered as she swallowed it.

It was all nonsense. There was nothing romantic in any of this. She'd let her emotions get out of hand, that was all, and it was Matthew's fault.

"Oh, hell!" she said fiercely, and flung the mug at the wall.

The mug and the wall never connected. Matthew appeared before she could blink and plucked the mug out of the air.

"A temper is not becoming in a woman," he said primly.

Kathryn's heart did an untidy little two-step at the sight of him, which only sharpened her anger.

"Where have you been?" she demanded.

He grinned at her. "Ah," he said, "I am touched. I didn't think you cared."

"I know you think nothing of materializing at will, but I find it infuriating!"

"That's unkind, madam." His tone was still proper and formal but she could see that his green eyes glinted with laughter. "It is not my idea to make such dramatic entrances but being a ghost leaves me with little choice in the matter."

Kathryn glared at him. "Give me that," she said, snatching the mug from his hand and dropping it into the sink. Then she wiped her hands on her bottom, turned and glared at him again. "It's time we had a talk, Captain McDowell."

"Such formality, and after all we've shared together."

"We've shared nothing," she said, her eyes snapping.

"You call sharing living quarters 'nothing'?" He frowned at the radio. Elton John was complaining about candles in the wind. "What is that noisy thing?"

"A radio."

"Another peculiar invention of your time?"

"Does it bother you?" Kathryn said sweetly. "Because if it does, I can always make it louder."

Matthew's brows arched. "I see you are not in a good mood today, Kathryn."

"My goodness, but you are perceptive!"

He moved past her, his arm just brushing hers. It sent an unnerving tremor up her spine.

"What are you doing?" she asked irritably.

"Looking for something to eat," he said, peering into the refrigerator.

She reached out and slammed the door shut. "You see? That's exactly what I mean about unbecoming behavior."

"If you're referring to the fact that you don't think ghosts are supposed to have appetites—"

"I'm referring to the way you think nothing of popping into rooms and doing whatever comes into your head without so much as a by-your-leave." Elton John had given up and Bruce Springsteen had taken over. Somehow, she wasn't in the mood for "Born in the USA." She shut the radio off and turned back to Matthew. "I called you when I came in a little while ago," she said crossly. "Didn't you hear me?"

"I assure you, Kathryn, if I really popped into rooms, as you call it, and did whatever comes into my head, last evening would have ended far differently than it did."

Kathryn went very still. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Only that a woman who expects to share her bed with a man shouldn't end up sleeping alone."

Crimson streaks swept into her face.

"You were spying on us!"

"I was not."

"You were sneaking around in my bedroom, waiting to see if—if..."

"I was not in the house at all," he said, his tone filled with indignation. "I spent the night at the foot of the cliff, beside the sea. When I returned this morning, you were in one bedroom and your betrothed was in another."

Kathryn frowned. "Why did you spend the night on the beach?"

A tiny muscle leaped in Matthew's jaw. Until now, it had been easy to keep a bantering tone.

"I thought I owed you privacy," he said stiffly.

Kathryn folded her arms. "How gallant."

Matthew didn't answer. There was no reason to tell her that gallantry had had nothing to do with his decision to spend the night out of the house, that what he'd really figured was that she had the right to a fiancé who was all in one piece, which would surely not have been the case if he'd caught the son of a bitch in bed with her.

"How noble." Her tone was frigid. "How out of character."

He couldn't keep from grinning. "Yes, it was. And unnecessary, as it turned out. Not that I was surprised. I could tell from the way things had gone between you yesterday that you were not about to succumb to your Jason's manly charms."

Color blazed in Kathryn's face again. She turned her back and began scrubbing out the coffee pot.

"I should have known better than to think you could be polite."

Matthew hitched one hip on the table and folded his arms over his chest.

"Where did your Jason take you last night?"

"Don't call him that!"

"Isn't he yours? You said he was."

"I said we were engaged to be married. As for where we went... it's none of your business."

"Nowhere special, I suppose."

"Well, you suppose wrong. We went out to dinner."

"Dinner, then home? Nothing more imaginative?"

"What would you suggest? This is Elizabeth Island, in case you'd forgotten. There are no concert halls or museums or movies."

"Movies?"

"Yes. Movies." She puffed out her breath, refilled the coffee pot, and set it on the burner. "Take my word for it, okay? There aren't any."

"It sounds like a very exciting evening," Matthew said politely.

"It was a very pleasant evening."

"And then you came back to Charon's Crossing and sent Jason to bed alone."

Kathryn flushed. "I am not going to discuss my private life with you," she said coldly. "In fact, I'm not going to discuss anything with you, anymore. From now on, you are to keep out of my way."

Matthew clapped his hand to his heart. "For shame, Kathryn. You cut me to the quick."

"I don't want you talking to me when other people are around, or turning on and off like snow on a TV set."

"Like snow on a what?"

"And you're to stop making everything into a bad joke," she said, ignoring the question. "It's bad enough you haunt my house, but to pretend it's funny is unconscionable!"

"Gallows humor, madam. It helps me deal with my reality but if it offends you, I will do what I can to restrain myself. Is there anything else?"

"Yes." Kathryn moistened her lips. "I wish you'd leave Charon's Crossing."

"My wish precisely, madam. Unfortunately, it is not possible."

"Then at least tell me why you haunt it," she said, turning towards him.

"I already have. Surely, you do not wish me to repeat the tale."

"No," she said quickly, "no, I understand about Catherine and Waring and that night. What I don't understand is why you're here instead of wherever it is people go after—after..."

"After they die?" he said with a twisted smile. "I've no idea where they go, Kathryn, but I do know why I have not gone there. It is because of what I have already told you, that it is against the laws of the cosmos to utter a curse with your dying breath. Fate turned my ill-chosen blasphemy back upon me. I became the accursed, doomed to spend eternity here, knowing neither love nor peace."

All Kathryn's anger seemed to drain away. "How horrible!"

"An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, the Bible says. And, it would seem, a curse for a curse."

"Oh, Matthew, I'm so sorry..."

"Waste no sympathy on me," he said coldly. "It is a punishment that fits my own stupidity for having believed in love."

"You were stupid to have believed in Cat. There's a difference."

"I watched you with Jason," Matthew said bluntly. "You are no one to offer a defense of love, Kathryn."

She blushed but didn't deny it. "I don't feel any great passion for Jason, that's true, but—"

"Love is a lie that can cloud a man's mind more than the strongest measure of laudanum. I, of all men, should have known that. I never knew my father, and my mother beat me until the day she died of consumption, when I was nine. I rejoiced in what I thought was my salvation, but when none of her relatives would have me, I was given over to the tender mercies of an orphanage run by a man who called himself a servant of God." He smiled tightly. "After a year of being whipped and starved for the love of the Lord and the instruction of my immortal soul, I ran off to sea, where the cat with nine tails gave instruction to my mortal flesh and the captain was the only God I had to love. I tell you this not to elicit sympathy," he said coldly, when Kathryn started to speak, "but to make certain you understand that I am fully enlightened with regard to the meaning of 'love.' "

His tone twisted the word into an obscenity. Kathryn wanted to move towards him, take him in her arms, tell him that—that...

She swallowed hard, then cleared her throat.

"And what about that—that thing in the attic? What is it? And why is it here?"

Matthew frowned. "I told you, that was a dream."

"Now, who's handing out reassurances fit for a twelve-year-old? Come on, Matthew. I know it wasn't a dream. This is my house and that—whatever it was—came after me. I've a right to know what it is."

He sighed and got to his feet. She was right, and he knew it.

"It is Waring," he said in a low voice. "The man I found with Catherine, who killed me even as I killed him."

Kathryn felt her blood turn to ice. "You mean, he's a ghost, too?"

"Nay. Not a ghost. A thing, just as you called him, existing in a place different than this, as I once did."

She sank down in a chair. "I feel as if I've stumbled into a time warp," she said, with a nervous laugh. "I don't understand any of this."

Matthew leaned towards her over the wide oak table, his hands planted firmly on the scarred wood.

"I will tell you what I have surmised," he said. "Waring was an aristocrat, a son of a bitch who despised anyone not of his class. Can you imagine what it must have done to him, to have died on the sword of such as me and for a woman who was little better than a whore?"

"So he's here because he hates you?"

"He is here to avenge himself, if he can break through from where he exists to this place."

The day was hot, the sun bright. Kathryn could hear birds singing outside in the garden. But in here, in the kitchen, the air had taken on a chill as cold as the grave.

"You mean... You mean, he's tried to hurt you?"

Matthew showed his teeth in a chill smile. "To kill me. Yes."

"But how can he do that if you're already—if you're already—"

She couldn't say the word, but Matthew could, and without any sign of emotion.

"If I am already dead?" His shoulders lifted and fell in an eloquent shrug. "I don't know. I can no more explain the laws of the universe now than I could when I was mortal." His eyes darkened. "The only thing I'm certain of is that Waring has grown stronger in the past days."