Ghost Layer (The Ghost Seer Series Book 2) (4 page)

His touch had her whole body clenching.

Then his head bent, and his lips were brushing hers, and she
had
to have a taste . . . Zach and that hint of sage and other spices.

God, he felt good, and his tongue sweeping through her mouth, and the simple large
shape
of his body. She put her arms around his neck and flattened herself against him.

Clare! Zach! Are we going for a ride?

Chill zoomed through her. Zach flinched, too, and let her go. She stepped back with wobbly knees to see Enzo circling them, grinning.

Zach cleared his throat. “We gotta go.”

“Yes.” She kept to his left side and his bad leg, and placed her hand lightly on his left upper arm, the arm he used for his cane, keeping his right hand free for his gun. When they reached the car parked on the street, she pulled out the fob and held it close to the door, then realized that she didn’t need to insert a key because there was no key. She pressed the button, feeling a little embarrassed.
Everyone
knew about fobs, and most people had a newer car than she. But she’d maintained the one she’d bought fourth-hand in college and had seen no need for such an expense when the old one ran fine.

With a slight smile, Zach said, “You could have done that from the driveway.”

She chuckled at herself. “Yes, I’m not used to it yet. I’ve been mostly walking around the neighborhood. I’m getting a bike, too.” She opened the door with a flourish. “You can give me the coordinates for the GPS, then nap on the way. I know you won’t want to fight traffic.”

“Got that right.” Just before he sank into the seat, he handed her some folded papers that he took from his jacket pocket. “Rickman said he’d e-mail you these, too, but here’s the contract Laurentine signed, and an agreement to consult for Rickman Security and Investigations.”

“All right.” She stuck them in her purse, setting it in a cubby between the seats. “I’ll look at them later.”

“You’ll scrutinize every word later.”

“That’s true. Settle in, Zach.”

He grunted and strapped in and tilted back the seat, then reeled off the address in Boulder for his mother’s facility, and seemed to fall asleep before she’d programmed the GPS.

Clare glanced over at him. She hadn’t often gotten to see him asleep. The few nights they’d slept together, he’d awakened before her.

He still appeared dangerous, and tingles jumped inside her. Her very own bad-boy-slash-good-man. Bad because she sensed that edge in him, and she’d been around a few times when he’d acted violently—defeated thieves and a kidnapper and had gotten the job done. A good man, because he controlled his aggression and used it, and he was grieving at the loss of his career in the public sector. He’d taken that “serve and protect” peace officer motto to heart.

She thought of how, if she signed the contract, she’d be working for or with Tony Rickman. She got the idea that man had maneuvered Zach into consulting with him, too. Zach had made his disdain for private investigators plain, yet here he was, a valued member of Team Rickman.

The changes in her life were altogether odd, but this job consultation thing was the least of it.

She remained a private, introverted person. Mostly in revolt against her extremely casual upbringing by parents who had no problems with drama, outrageous scenes, and an open marriage.

Clare hadn’t seen her parents in two years. They hadn’t bothered to come to Great-Aunt Sandra’s funeral, didn’t even send flowers or a card, and Clare and her brother had had to arrange with their attorney where the older Cermaks’ share of Great-Aunt Sandra’s furniture would be warehoused.

Clare swallowed. Most of her feelings for her parents were irritation and pain with traces of love. She understood now that their priorities were themselves and having a good time, and as much as she told herself not to judge, that was difficult.

But for
her
to be fulfilled, she had to contribute to society, do work she felt was meaningful. Before her gift, it was helping people understand their finances as an accountant. Now, she didn’t know, but at least she had a significant amount of money to donate to charities . . .

Zach grunted in his sleep. He’d miss his work, too. He said he’d gotten disability and retirement benefits from the county where he’d been shot in the line of duty, enough so he could retire. Of course, she hadn’t pressed about the figure, but he’d made it clear he hadn’t wanted to retire at thirty-five.

She knew his father was in the military. Two of the things they had in common were living a lot of places as children, and a need to make their own way.

As for his mother . . . Clare felt he loved his mother deeply, but pain and frustration were wrapped in with that love. A woman he intended to visit weekly because of that love and despite the pain.

But his family had been torn apart by the drive-by killing of Zach’s beloved sixteen-year-old brother when Zach had been twelve.

Clare ran into traffic and concentrated on her driving for the rest of the way.

When she pulled into the parking lot of a three-story building with lovely landscaping and stopped, Zach woke up and stretched, then rubbed his face with his hands.

“God, too much time in a damn vehicle.” He opened the door and stepped out, and Clare noticed he used his brace as well as his orthopedic shoes. Still, he hauled out his cane.

When she locked the car and came around it, he twirled the cane.

She smiled. “I noticed the new one.”

“Better for bartitsu.”

“Ah.”

“I’ve signed up for regular classes at the studio in Denver.”

“What mixture of martial arts is it again?”

“Cane fighting, boxing, and jujitsu.”

“Okay.”

“I think I’ll put my own spin on it.”

“Naturally.”

“We’ll see how the teacher-owner handles that.” Zach sounded pleased with the challenge. Again he stretched and Clare looked at the residential mental health facility where his mother lived.

Even after the hottest August in Colorado, the lawn and bushes were green. Banks of multicolored roses flanked the concrete walk up to the front entrance. The blond-beige brick and red-roofed building with a hint of “Southwest” style was common for institutions built around the turn of the twentieth century.

“Enzo?” she asked. The ghost Labrador had disappeared from the backseat of the car, and she didn’t know whether he’d traveled with them that way or by supernatural means.

No ghosts from your time period, Clare! Only Indians who don’t want to talk to you!
Enzo projected.

“That’s fine with me.”

“What?” Zach asked.

She smiled at him. “No ghosts who want to speak with me here.”

“Sounds good.”

It was her turn to stretch discreetly. They began to walk up the concrete ramp with metal side rails. “What should I call your mother?”

“Call her Geneva.”

“All right.”

“Uh, something you should know before we go in.”

Probably a lot of things, issues piled upon issues, that Clare couldn’t even guess. “Yes?”

ZACH SAID, “MY
mother and I don’t. . . and nobody on the staff . . . talks about Jim.”

“I won’t bring up Jim.”

Zach cleared his throat. “She knows I’m grown but still thinks Jim’s alive . . . and sixteen. It doesn’t make sense, but that’s how it is. Jim’s always just stepped out of the room, or gone to get her something, flowers or a present maybe.”

Clare stopped on the wide porch, a couple of yards from the first set of double glass doors. “Should we have gotten her flowers?”

“I brought some earlier today,” Zach said. “White roses, her favorite.” In an exaggerated gesture, he bent down and sniffed her neck. “Nothing like this perfume you wear. Exotic, sexy.”

She swept a look at him from under her lashes, then her half smile faded with memory. “It was Great-Aunt Sandra’s. It smelled different on her.” Clare bit her lip and blinked back tears. “The perfume is outrageously expensive, and since the fragrance was discontinued, she stocked up before it was gone. She had five huge unopened bottles of it.”

Zach turned her face so she looked him in the eye, and a sizzle zipped through her. “You tough and frugal lady,” he teased. “You can’t tell me you don’t miss her. Or that you don’t like the scent yourself. It mixes with your own smell really well.” His brows went up and down and she had to smile.

Clare let her shoulders sag. “I do miss her.” She swallowed to keep the tears from leaking. “I avoided her. I wanted to live a rational life.” She didn’t like the plaint in her voice, so she removed it. Curling her fingers around his hand, which stroked her cheek, she said, “It’s good that you’re doing this, that you come and visit your mother, no matter what. I wish—” She shook her head, made a gesture of futility. “I regret what I did in the past. You should always keep visiting. It’s the right thing to do, even if it is hard on you, and yes, I can see that it is.”

He looked away and his hand dropped, but the side of his mouth rose in a half smile. “Fierce lady. I like that.”

“You haven’t seen anything yet,” she said, though she hadn’t been fierce in her old life, had never let the strain of gypsy blood, of gypsy music, run free in her. But now that the “gift” had come through that blood and destroyed her normal life, she might explore that side of her nature.

Just before they stepped through the doors, Zach said, “And don’t mention the General, well, she thinks of him as the Colonel. It distresses her. Not as much as trying to convince her that Jim is dead, which will shred her sanity, but if you mention my father, she will expect him to walk through the door and that will destroy her serenity. He hasn’t visited her in years, won’t have her living with him, and she doesn’t want to live with me and cramp my style. She gets confused and stressed on her own and doesn’t make good decisions.” Zach puffed out a breath. “So many topics to dance around.”

She squeezed his upper arm. “Rules,” she said firmly. “Rules of courtesy to interact with your mother. I’m much better knowing the rules.”

“Yeah, you are, and you don’t challenge ’em much, and for that, in this instance, I am grateful.”

Tossing her head and letting her hair whirl felt good. “I’ll show you fierceness, Jackson Zachary Slade. Tonight.”

“I’ll hold you to that.”

Once they were inside, one of the nurses behind the main desk came around to greet them. “Thank you for coming, Mr. Slade. Your mother’s been fretting, waiting for you.” The nurse nodded to Clare. “And your girlfriend.”

At the door, the nurse knocked, then stepped aside and let Zach and Clare go into a medium-sized room painted a rich cream that had a few antique pieces, several paintings, and a small sitting area facing a wide window.

The hominess of the place allowed Clare to relax. It appeared more like an apartment than an institutional room. Proof, had she needed it, that Zach cared for his mother. That warmed Clare’s heart, though jitters skidded along her nerves. Would Geneva like her?

An elegant woman sat in an old-fashioned rounded and soft armchair with a white blanket over her knees, a book on her lap, perfectly groomed. She turned her head and her melancholy expression became hesitant. “Zach?”

“Yes, Mama.”

With a smile, she put the book and blanket aside and stood, not quite as tall as Clare herself, and almost painfully thin. Her hair was silver and styled in short, soft waves around a face several shades paler than Zach’s. She opened her arms. “So good to see you.”

Zach limped the few steps to her, and Geneva’s gaze skittered away from the cane and his bad foot and fixed on his face.

Clare flinched. Zach’s mother didn’t seem to see that he limped. She wasn’t ignoring it like Clare did, but put it out of her mind the moment she noticed.

Maybe “bad” things, particularly bad things that happened to her son, didn’t make it past the shell she’d encased herself in to deal with the world.

When he neared her, he set his cane against the large round arm of the chair and embraced her. He was careful, as if her long, thin bones might break. When he rocked with her, Clare’s throat closed at the love expressed between them.

After Geneva let go, Zach reached for his cane and stepped back. Enzo, who’d been sniffing around, sat and stared, head tilted, ears lifted slightly, at Geneva Slade.
She is a pretty and nice and sad lady.

Clare thought she saw a tiny flinch from Geneva and the woman’s body angled away from the spectral dog—could she sense Enzo?—as she faced Clare. The older woman’s smile bloomed and Clare relaxed. At least Zach’s mother liked what she saw. Maybe Clare would get through this meeting all right.

Geneva held out both hands. “Look at you, so lovely!” She smiled at Zach, too, including him in her delight. “Introduce us.”

“Clare, this is my mother, Geneva Warren Slade. Mama, this is Clare Cermak.”

Clare took the woman’s hands, soft in her own. “I’m very pleased to meet you.”

“Oh, I’m so pleased also.” Geneva sent a teasing glance at Zach. “He hasn’t brought a young lady to meet me in ages.”

“Mama,” Zach protested.

“Then I’m doubly happy,” Clare said. “That I’m meeting you and that he likes me enough to bring me to see you.” That was only the truth.

Geneva squeezed Clare’s hands with a light grip then released them and gestured to the four chairs grouped around a low, square table of dark wood with fancy legs and carving around the edge. Atop it stood a beautiful china vase of pastel pink containing long-stemmed white roses. “Let’s sit and visit. Zach, you just missed Jim. He went out to play basketball.”

Zach tensed.

“But he brought me these beautiful roses.” Geneva sniffed at them before she sat.

It was easy for Clare to feel the emotional pain radiating from Zach. He’d given his mother those roses and she’d forgotten that, preferring to think that they’d come from his dead brother, who still lived in her mind. Preferring that child over this man.

Clare moved close to him and put her arm through his.

Enzo nudged Clare.
Give her this.
Something solid was in his mouth—although Clare still didn’t understand how that could be—and she took it and flinched at the cold metal. It felt like a trinket box. She moved to bump her hand against Zach’s, murmured so only he could hear, “A gift for your mother.” He took the little box in a smooth move that seemed more criminal-like than cop-like, betraying nothing on his face or body, and offered it to his mother. “I have something for you, Mama.”

“Oh?” Geneva looked quizzical, shook her head. “Don’t think you have to bring me something every time you come.”

He went over and opened his hand in front of her, and both of them jolted. Tears welled in Geneva’s eyes and trickled down her cheeks. She raised her hands to her mouth. “Oh. Oh,” she said from behind her fingers.

Zach stared down at the little box on his palm, gold-toned with a china top that had a painted classical pastoral scene. His head slowly turned to Clare, surprise in his eyes.

Geneva took the trinket, swallowed hard, and Clare drew some tissues from a container on an end table and hurried over.

The older woman turned the box over in her hands, opened it, and Clare saw hairpins.

“Oh! I lost this when—at a bad time in my life. It was my grandmother’s!” She put it down and used the tissues. “Zach, you are so clever to have found it.”

“Sure,” Zach said, his voice creaky.

Clare touched his wrist so he could hear Enzo, and sent a thought to the ghost dog.
Where did you find that?

Enzo tilted his head in the other direction.
It slipped in-between. Stuff sometimes falls in-between.
His tongue lolled.
Like the pocket watch and the gold coin that I got from in-between and put on your bureau.

Oh.
Another thing to figure out when she had time. Though the very idea sent a shivery snake down her spine. She didn’t know if her mind could handle it.

Zach pulled away and moved a chair closer to his mother’s. “I didn’t want to make you sad. I can take it away if you—”

Geneva snatched at the little box, held it close to her bosom. “No. I truly want it, Zach. It’s too lovely to be sitting in the drawer of a bachelor’s desk or dresser.” She smiled now, lowered her hand, and stared at the treasure. “And don’t tell me you’d keep it out to look at, because you wouldn’t. Not a female thing like this.”

Clare took a seat at right angles to Zach. “You know your son well.”

“I know both my sons well.” She paused, murmured, “My very special sons.”

“Not that special, Mama,” he replied as softly as she. His gaze slid to Clare, then away, and his jaw flexed.

An awkward pause ensued.

Geneva said, “So, Clare, are you a Colorado native like my sons?”

Clare cleared her throat. “No, I was born in Chicago, where most of my family is from, though my parents traveled quite a bit and my brother and I grew up all over the States.”

Geneva’s face stiffened. “You don’t look like a military child.”

Clare didn’t know what that meant, but answered, “No, my mother was lucky enough to inherit a sizable trust fund when she was twenty-one, and she and my father prefer to travel. They took us with them.”

“Ah.” A faint line of disapproval showed in Geneva’s forehead. “I understand about trust funds.” She made a graceful gesture. “But my family and I believe we are custodians of the money for the future.” She shrugged. “To each their own.”

“I agree with you about fiscal responsibility,” Clare said, leaning toward Geneva. She’d already invested most of her inheritance and made a will in favor of her niece . . . the next victim of the curse of ghost seeing if Enzo was right. Clare smiled. “I’m an accountant.” And she
was
; she just wasn’t with a large firm anymore, because someone else needed the job more than she.

“Oh.” Geneva smiled. “You don’t look at all like my accountants. They are the typical stuffy old men.”

Zach reached out and clasped Clare’s hand. “She’s also a gypsy.”

Now Geneva’s expression cleared and she chuckled. “Oh, how intriguing! That would explain the need to travel.”

Clare nodded. “It could. And my father is from a Romani family, too, though I don’t think my parents, or even my grandparents, were an essential part of their clans. I believe the connection was lost when my family emigrated.”

“Ah. And I think my family tends to hold on to its roots too much.” Geneva shrugged. “It’s in how we were raised, even in our blood, I think.”

Enzo barked as if in agreement, went over, and put his head on Geneva’s knee.
Good blood, good family.

Geneva turned pale and began gasping, her hands twisting together.

Enzo
, Clare sent a mental rebuke,
I think you should leave. You are bothering her.

But, Clare! She smells really, really good. Not as good as you or Mrs. Flinton or Zach, but gooood.
He gave her the big puppy dog eyes.

Zach had gotten up and drawn his mother into his embrace, frowning at Clare.

Enzo, go! Surely there are some ghost squirrels to chase . . . or real ones for that matter.

Squirrels!
Enzo squealed, hopping to his feet and looking at the window, zooming through it without a word.

Geneva rested on her son, then said, “I’m sorry, I seem very tired now.” She looked up at Zach and smiled. “Thank you for visiting, and bringing Clare.” The older woman held out a hand and Clare was glad to see it didn’t tremble. Clare wrapped her fingers around Geneva’s, thinking that something in addition to cherishing family roots traveled through the woman’s blood. This was where Zach got his sensitivity—which he wasn’t forced to acknowledge as she had had to do—or which he didn’t admit to her.

They said their good-byes and left, Zach limping heavier than he had going in.

He studied her car. “I’d like to drive—do you mind?” It was nearly an order.

“All right.” Clare handed over the fob, glanced around for Enzo, who was nowhere to be seen.

Once in the car, Zach flexed his fingers on the wheel. “Do you think my brother’s ghost haunts my mother?”