In Love With a Haunted House (Contemporary Romance) (3 page)

Blake was trying very hard not to pay attention to Mallory. That was easier said than done though since everything about her was incredibly appealing. It was not just her body, either, she had a sense of humor and she was sharp as a tack; that was obvious. Other men might be a sucker for breasts and a well-shaped ass, not that he was immune to those things, but what he really was,
was
a sucker for smart. And Mallory was smart as a whip, and not afraid to let that show. Too many women hid their intelligence, hoping to keep men from finding them intimidating. In Blake’s opinion any man intimidated by a smart woman did not deserve one.

“Take it easy,” he told himself. “First off she’s not looking like she wants to be friends and what’s more—what would she say if she knew your history?”

That threw a little cold water on his growing attraction, but not much. And nothing was dimming his desire for the house. He took a step closer to her and said, “So you grew up next door to here, huh?”

“I thought I recognized you, dearie.”

She had definitely heard a voice!

“Are you okay?”

Mallory looked at Blake. “What?”

“Are you okay? You look a little pale.”

Of course she was pale; someone invisible was talking to her! “It’s hot up here.”

“There doesn’t seem to be any good air-conditioning up here. Maybe you should consider that when you are bidding.”

“Nice try, buddy,” Mallory said.

Blake opened his mouth to say something in return but before he could he was shoved, literally, across the room and into a large wardrobe. The doors of the wardrobe slammed shut, but not before Mallory caught a glimpse of his shocked face and wide-open mouth.

She was tempted to just leave him there to suffer but after he began to pound on the doors with both fists and yell some very indelicate words she took pity on him. She opened the doors and peered in at him, asking quite sweetly, “Are you okay? You look a little pale.”

Blake climbed out of the wardrobe. He wanted to ask her if she had seen what had just happened, but on the other hand he was determined to pretend as if suddenly flying across the room and into a large piece of furniture was a common occurrence.

That could not have just happened! There had to be some kind of explanation for it, maybe the floor had a slippery spot and he had lost his balance and just crashed into the damn thing. He managed to dust off his hands and knees slowly and deliberately while she tried, with very little success, to wipe that smirk right off her pretty face.

“Yoo-hoo! Are you two kids okay up there?”

“Was she always that annoying?”

Mallory grinned at him. “Worse. She’s actually mellowed according to what my mom says.”

“Does your mom spend much time with her?”

“Not if she can help it.” Mallory was trying to pretend that she had not just seen him being hurtled across the room and into a wardrobe. In the entire span of her childhood she had never seen one thing in this house that would make her suspect it was haunted. Then again she never actually been inside the house, either, she had always just admired it from her bedroom window or her side yard.

“He deserved a little bit of a takedown.”

The voice was back, and she was willing to bet that it actually belonged to Ms. Lewis. But what would Ms. Lewis be doing haunting her own haunted house? The truth was probably far simpler and less extraordinary. She had just driven almost 14 hours straight while slugging back those horrible little five-hour energy drinks along with oversized cups of coffee. Not to mention she had spent almost an entire week sucking down sugar and nothing else, her body and brain were probably just reacting to some kind of withdrawal or sugar shock.

“We should probably go down before she tries to climb the stairs.” Blake looked at Mallory, and then said, “You have a little smudge of dirt right there.”

He leaned close to her, his finger coming out to stroke lightly across her cheek. His touch made her shiver, and not in a bad way. She had never experienced the sensations that were swirling through her right then—she wanted to kiss him! She wanted to lean against his chest and see if it was a strong as it looked, and she wanted to put her face in his faded shirt and see if it smelled like cologne like she suspected that it did.

What was wrong with her? She had just been dumped by a man that she was supposed to marry and spend her entire life with, the last thing on earth she needed was to start running after this one.

Cara looked up at her daughter as she paced the living room floor. “So Louise had more than one potential buyer?”

Mallory said, “Yes. I should’ve known, she always was one to hedge her bets. Now tell me again how she wound up being the one to sell that house.”

“Well, apparently there was a fight between some of the descendants. There was talk about there being an…ahem...illegitimate heir. Some say that old Ms. Lewis had quite a few secrets, a kid born out of wedlock among them.”

“That’s just crazy. She never even left the house!”

“Oh I know, can you imagine? Who would she have had a child with anyway? The grocery delivery boy or her lawn service guy?”

Mallory asked, “Is that same man that used to cut her grass still cutting it? Because the last time I saw him he weighed about three hundred pounds.”

“Maybe he got all sweaty cutting grass and came in for a drink of water, maybe she just couldn’t resist him.”

“Mom, you read way too many romance novels.”

“I do.” Her laughter tinkled out to the living room. “Ever since your father left I guess that’s pretty much where I get my  fill of romantic enjoyment.”

That was still a sore spot for Mallory. She had been completely unable to believe that her parents were getting divorced after twenty-one years of marriage but they had. Her father had said that he was simply unhappy, and that her mother was, too, and while things had seemed amicable on the surface Mallory often wondered if they really were.

The truth was her mother actually did seem even more ridiculously cheerful, not that she ever had seemed depressed. She did have that sunny disposition after all. On an impulse Mallory asked, “Mom, do you ever miss having Dad around?”

“Of course I do, we were together for a very long time and it’s hard not to miss somebody when you’re used to them being around.”

“How do you know you don’t love him anymore?”

“Because I don’t. Mallory, I hope you’re not thinking that maybe you can pull off some plot to get your father and me back together. That’s never going to happen, we’re both very happy.”

She decided to change the subject. “I saw pictures in Ms. Lewis’s bedroom today. They were of a guy in uniform. Like, a military uniform. Maybe that’s the guy that died and left her all alone.”

“Maybe she was just a sucker for a guy in uniform.”

Mallory threw her hands up in the air. “Mom, you’re impossible!”

“Yes, but think of it. Wouldn’t it be interesting if she actually did have an unclaimed child running around somewhere? It would be almost like a soap opera right here on our very own street.”

Mallory gave up. When her mom got to thinking about things like that there
was no
stopping her, the best thing she could do was simply drop the subject. Even if Ms. Lewis had had a child, it would be as old as Cara by now.

**

In his small motel room Blake was thinking about Mallory. He had tried to turn his thoughts elsewhere ever since he’d gotten back to the shabby little place, but given that the decor looked like a drunk interior designer with a vendetta against the motel had been allowed to run amok inside the rooms, and the fact that the TV didn’t work, there was precious little else to occupy his mind.

So, she had grown up next door to Gray Oaks. He wondered if she’d ever seen any ghosts there. What was he thinking? There was no such thing as ghosts, and everyone who said that the house was haunted was either just another gossip or buying into the hysteria.

Or did he really believe that? Something had happened today, he had felt something push him across that floor and into that wardrobe whether he wanted to admit it or not. It had been the oddest feeling, and that strange slide across the floor had felt like he was being pushed by a strong wind. Right before the wardrobe had closed he had thought he had seen a woman standing behind Mallory.

That was insane, of course. Ghosts did not exist. He was a grown man, not some terrified high school kid who had listened to one too many campfire stories. He had to have slipped on the floor. Maybe he’d been so distracted by Mallory’s mouth he hadn’t even noticed her hands coming up to push him.

Of course, it would have been impossible not to notice anybody pushing him that fast and that hard. It had been a hell of a push. He’d gone flying across the floor like he was on skates and the floor was covered in oil.

I am overthinking this, he thought. That did not give him any comfort, and it did not stop his thoughts either. Okay, so he was overthinking it. So be it. He’d had a lot on his mind ever since he had learned that Gray Oaks would be put up for sale.

Shannon Lewis had not left any direct relatives, or so they claimed. That wasn’t true — and Blake should know, he was her grandson.

Not that anybody on her side of the family would’ve ever claimed him. They had been mortified apparently back in the day when she had gotten pregnant with his father. She’d been banking on marrying his grandfather, but he had the bad manners to get himself killed in the war, leaving her not only pregnant but single. In those days women who bore children out of wedlock were not looked upon well, and her family had hoped that she might come to her senses and wed at some point.

He often wished he could’ve met her, but she did not want to know him. She had never wanted to know his father either and in a way he could not blame her. She had spent several months stashed away in a small summer house belonging to his paternal grandparents. As soon as she had borne his father, her own family had come and taken her away, leaving his father with his grandparents.

Blake often wondered how badly that desertion had cut his father. George Hunter Jr. was a very quiet man, one who did not do anything lightly. He had married very late in life, so that by the time Blake was in high school he was already in his 60s.

He had never spoken about his mother, not even when Blake had pressed him. When Blake had gone to his grandparents, who were already reaching the end of their lives by then, they had told him that Shannon Lewis was as rich as she was crazy, and she was very rich.

It had been his grandmother who had told them all about Gray Oaks and its storied history. It had begun as a sea captain’s house, a sea captain who had fallen so completely in love with a woman that he’d been willing to give up his ship and his sailing career for her.

He built a house and named it Gray Oaks for the long strands of Spanish moss that hung from the giant trees that shaded the drive. They had no sooner married and had children, settling into the life of well-to-do farmers, than rebellion and unrest began to break out all across the South.

It was rumored that the Underground Railroad had a station there in an outbuilding, and then after the war the house passed into the hands of a niece who had taken it into her head to be an actress in an age when actresses were often the subject of much scandal.

The actress had thrown huge parties, and apparently had a really good time. Her many lovers had come and gone. And she had three children, none of them legitimate. One of her children was one of the earliest mobsters in Chicago and after his fortune was assured he moved back to town and set up residence in the house after his mother died.

That man was Shannon Lewis’s father. Perhaps it was no surprise that Shannon was headstrong and stubborn, that she wanted what she wanted and she had no intention of settling for anything else. What she had wanted was one George Hunter, even though his family found her to be entirely unsuitable.

Blake sometimes wondered if Shannon didn’t come to see his father simply because she was afraid his grandparents would not allow it. He supposed it really didn’t matter why, all he knew is that there were only two relatives left in the family: him and a distant cousin who wanted to sell the house as quickly as possible and take off with the money. Blake had no issue with that, except he wanted the house.

He didn’t really even know why, it just seemed to him that it was the right place for him.

Blake had grown up outside Atlanta and Golden, 100 miles to the south, was a thriving and bustling midsize city. He had often driven down to Golden, once he got his license, and spent hours just circling the block around his grandmother’s house.

Sometimes he would park his car at a nearby grocery store or park and walk the neighborhood in which his grandmother lived. So many of the houses were beautiful, imposing and tall, but none of them were as beautiful as Gray Oaks to him.

As soon as his father had informed him that Shannon had died Blake knew that he had to have that house. He was going to have that house. Nothing was going to stop him from getting it. He had known who Shannon’s lawyer was because his grandparents remembered what firm she had used and the only difference between that firm then and now was that now the grandson had taken over the family business.

Blake had informed the lawyer that he wanted the house and that Ms. Lewis was his grandmother so he had every right to it and if he wasn’t in the will that was fine. He would buy the property outright. Then, the fighting had begun.

Blake had to admit that was probably the biggest mistake he had ever made. He should have just waited until it went on the market and tried to buy it that way but he had never considered that his distant cousin might be one of the greediest human beings on the planet.

He was, though, and he was determined not to give Blake anything, not even a crumb off the floor of the old place. Thankfully he did want to sell, however, and although the price he named originally was far too high, Blake was sure that he would come down, especially when the appraisal on the house went through and came up with a depressingly low number.

The place had been kept up on the outside but Shannon Lewis had not allowed anyone inside in decades so nobody had known the extent of the repairs that would be needed. They had made Blake’s heart sink a little as well but he was a good carpenter and he had worked on several restoration projects in his line of work. He was confident he could do most of the work himself and do it well.

Now if he could just stop thinking about Mallory…