In Love With a Haunted House (Contemporary Romance) (6 page)

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Mallory also lay in her bed, but like Blake she was not sleeping. She was thinking about Blake and she was also thinking about Jim. She knew it was not fair to compare the two. Jim was a cerebral man, one who believed that the mind was basically everything. He had eschewed physical labor, and in fact often exhibited an abhorrence of it that often bothered her.

Jim was content in his position in his life. Or at least he seemed to be, all up until that day she walked in to find him sitting there in his almost feminine little pose waiting for her to come home so that he could break the news to her that he was leaving.

She threw a pillow at the wall. She expected to feel sad, remembering that little scene but instead all she felt was angry. How dare he do that to her? She closed her eyes and it all came flooding back. She could see him sitting there, his light blue and heavily starched oxford shirt buttoned absolutely correctly and tucked in tightly around his lean waist. A waist that stayed lean due to his constant, strict dieting and often even stricter juicing and fasting programs.

He had had his fingers laced together and placed carefully around one knee. The ankle of the foot on top had been placed precisely between his ankle and the knee of the other leg. The creases on his slacks had been sharp enough to cut butter and his high cheekbone face had worn an appropriately solemn expression.

How long had he worked to get his face into just that expression? Had he practiced in front of the mirror just to get it right? She wouldn’t doubt it since Jim had done more strange things than that over the course of the time they had been together.

She sat up, her eyes taking in the familiar lines and spaces of her childhood bedroom. The full bed sat in one corner, across from the windows that looked out onto the side yard of Gray Oaks. The tall white dresser that matched her headboard and footboards had held her clothes since she was twelve. The fluffy blue-and-white rug on the floor had been laid that same year as well.

The year she had been twelve, that had been a big year for her. Her outgrown bedroom furniture had vanished to make way for a larger bed and dresser, and the vanity table with a mirror so that she could start to apply the makeup that she coveted so much back then. She also had begun to hang up posters of movie stars on the wall. Most of those posters were down now, replaced by prints of Picasso’s works as well as prints from other artists that she had admired throughout the years.

The curtains on the window had been hand-sewn by her grandmother. The comforter on her bed had a stain from the night she had hosted a slumber party and one of the girls had carelessly spilled hot cocoa on the bed.

Everything about the room was so familiar, and so welcoming. She found herself comparing it to the bedroom she had had in Chicago, not the one she had as a single woman but the one she had shared with Jim. It had been perfect, that bedroom. It had had the perfect furniture, the perfect carpet and even the perfect couple in it and yet it had not been perfect at all, not really.

She still had the furniture. A king-size sleigh bed whose rock maple gleamed thanks to years of lemon and beeswax being rubbed into it, a matching nightstand, dresser and chest of drawers with a large mirror. It occurred to her that Jim had never paid a dime for that furniture. He had gone along with her when she had gone to pick the furniture out, both of them having decided that her small convertible bed and his only slightly larger full bed were no longer sufficient since they were moving in together.

He had insisted on that very set, and she had never questioned whether or not she even liked it. Lying there now, in the bed that she had slept in for most of her youth, she found herself questioning if she actually did like it. Why had she had the moving company bring it all the way to Golden?

It was sitting in a storage unit, along with most of her other things, waiting for the day when she would have her own place again. But when she did get her own place again did she really want that furniture in there?

Blake… Now there was a man who believed in doing things that were physical. She could not imagine him picking out a bed at all. She could imagine him saying something like, “Whatever you think works well enough.” But was that any better?

Maybe she was being entirely unfair. Blake was a very sensitive guy for all his masculine virility. Just thinking of his masculinity made her blush. When he had been kissing her she had felt just how hard and eager he was, she had known that she had excited him as much as he excited her and in a way that was very gratifying but it was also terrifying.

Jim had never been much of a lover. In fact he had often treated sex as if it were perfunctory duty that he participated in only because he had no choice.

Maybe her mother was right. Maybe Jim had never been in the same relationship she was in.

Blake… Now there was a man who would be all in. He would hold nothing back. He would not know how to hold back unless you gave him a manual and explained it to him.

The thin silver light of the moon filtered down into her window, through the open curtains, and Mallory slowly got up and went to the window, leaning far out of it and looking over at Gray Oaks. The slight tower that rose from the second floor of to the third on the same side of the house that her bedroom overlooked was also touched by the moonlight.

Mallory frowned, sure she was hallucinating. For a moment—a brief and quickly gone moment—it seemed as if there were a figure standing in that window looking back at her. Mallory had seen Shannon Lewis all her young life, from a distance at any rate. Shannon had always seemed old, frail and bent. Whoever had been looking out at her from that window had been young, with shining black hair that cascaded to the middle of the back of her slim figure clad in a thin nightgown.

The moonlight continued to beam down, outlining the crisp little blades of grass, the delicate petals of the lilies that grew rampant and the blooming roses on the bushes. Those flowers sent out their heavenly scents and she leaned further out the window, closing her eyes as she inhaled them. How could anyone stand to sell something so beautiful just to turn it into another soulless and featureless apartment building?

Well, it wasn’t going to happen if she could help it.

What a sweet girl. I’m glad she made it back from wherever it
was she went
to because her mama was very lonely without her. Her mama used to think that I didn’t see her watching me, but of course I did. It was a shame when her husband left her but I could’ve told her that was going to happen years before it did, not that she did not know it herself. The two of them were staying together for that girl and after she was gone they just stayed together because they were used to each other. They were rubbing along like two old horses in a harness.

I know a lot of people thought I was crazy, that I should’ve moved on after George died. Plenty of people told me so too. That’s because they had the kind of love that happens from the outside not the kind of love that grows from the inside.

You should really hurry, George, I know you’re still out there somewhere, trying to get back. I know it’s been hard for you and I tried a lot of times to make it easier for you but dying the way you did made it easy for you to get lost.

It’s such a very long way home, isn’t it? Oh well, at least that girl over there made it back all in one piece even though she might think she lost some parts of herself along the way.

A week went by. Louise informed Blake and Mallory both that Lonnie had indeed gotten a developer on the hook. She was as unhappy about it as they were because if the developer bought she would be cut right out of her hefty commission.

The
news
she gave them a few days after that was equally depressing. The developer had offered a price that was far beyond anything the two of them could hope to match even if they did pool their resources.

Blake drove over to the house, and on an impulse he went to Mallory’s front door and knocked. She opened the door and he couldn’t help but be stunned all over again by her beauty. That day she was wearing a pair of plain denim shorts with a white T-shirt and her hair was pulled up in a simple ponytail, though little wisps and curls had escaped it to fall around her face. She looked young and innocent and heartbreakingly lovely.

Almost before he knew what he was going to say he blurted out, “I don’t suppose we could go over there and set up the place to booby-trap the developer.”

For the first time in almost a week Mallory laughed. “Are you serious?”

“I can’t think of anything else to do, can you?”

“Well, no, not really. I don’t suppose you could actually give the developer the phone number for the historical society and let those women talk to him. They could talk him out of anything, I bet.”

“It’s too bad we simply can’t ask my grandmother to make an appearance when the developer shows up. Maybe she could scare him out of wanting to buy the place.”

He was standing so close to her, his firm yet soft lips near enough to touch if she would only move just a slight bit closer herself. Don’t do it, don’t do it, she told herself but her body wasn’t listening to her brain. She moved a little bit closer, so close that he could smell her sweet perfume and see the small dab of jelly on one corner of her mouth from the toast she had been eating for breakfast.

The kiss was natural, unplanned and intense but sweet. Their mouths met, clung to each other’s and his arms wrapped around her, pulling her tighter to his embrace. Both of them needed this; it was foolish but they couldn’t stop it.

When they finally did break apart the only thing he could manage to utter was, “Wow.”

Blake began to laugh. “I hope that’s a compliment.”

“Oh it is, it is. In fact I think you should do that again.”

“I think you’re right.”

He did kiss her again, slowly and softly but meaningfully. Long moments passed while they stood there on her front porch just kissing each other and reveling in the nearness of the other.

Finally they broke apart again, both of them wearing slightly dazed expressions. Mallory asked, “You want to sit down?”

“Maybe I should.”

“How about some tea? I just made a fresh pitcher.”

“I would love some. You didn’t get converted to unsweet tea while you were up there in the North, did you?”

Mallory laughed at that. “No. In fact it was this huge bone of contention between me and my ex. He hated sweet tea, he thought it was disgusting and you know I grew up on it so I love it.”

She turned and went back into the house to fetch the tea, and before the screen door swung shut he saw how her pert little rump swung from side to side as she walked. That was the last thing on earth he needed today, she was going to give him a heart attack right here on her porch!

When she came back out she set out a pitcher and two glasses choked with ice and lemon on a little table in front of the small patio set sitting on the porch. “So it looks like neither one of us is going to get the house.”

“It looks that way.”

She poured the tea and handed him a glass. Blake looked down into it, wishing there was something he could say but not knowing what to say. Finally he just said, “I’m sorry you came all the way home and didn’t get what you came here for.”

Mallory laughed. “Who told you that I came here just to get the house?”

Blake said, “Nobody. I just assumed that that’s what you came for.” There was no way in hell he was going to tell her what Lonnie had said.

Mallory eased that awkwardness by saying, “I moved back home because I had to. The company I worked for in Chicago downsized and there’s a huge unemployment rate there right now. You know, it’s the weirdest thing, when I was growing up here all I could think about was how important it would be to leave here and to be somebody out there in the bigger world but the whole time I was gone from here, I missed it.

“I came back and I honestly thought that it was the end of the world. That I had failed somehow but do you know, I don’t think that’s true. I started my own little business and while I will never make the kind of money I was making in Chicago I also don’t have the kind of expenses that I had there. And I won’t miss home anymore, because I am home.

“And also, before somebody else tells you, you should know that I was engaged to be married. I had a whole fund set up for a house and everything but he left right before the invitations went out. It seems that he found me unfit to be a wife.”

“I just can’t imagine how that’s possible. I mean, how could anyone leave you?”

“I’m a really bad cook.”

The laughter that filled the air between them was real. Blake said, “Did he not know how to navigate his way to the nearest McDonald’s?”

Mallory said, “Oh, Jim would never eat McDonald’s. It wasn’t even in his vocabulary.”

Blake feigned horror. “He wouldn’t eat McDonald’s? Why that’s positively barbaric!”

“Actually, he thought eating fast food was barbaric.”

“Do you miss him?”

She met his eyes squarely. “At first I thought it would die. I was so heartbroken and so upset but recently it occurred to me that it wasn’t really him that I missed, it was everything else. It was being the successful accountant, the big fancy apartment in the extremely nice area of Chicago. It was being somebody’s fiancée, and all of the things that came along with that.

“A few days ago it occurred to me that I wasn’t crying because I missed him and I wasn’t hurt because it was over, I was crying and hurt because of the way it ended. It was so childish the way he did things. He waited until the last minute instead of just being honest with me. If he wasn’t sure like he said, if he didn’t think I was suitable he should have said so in the first place instead of living with me all those years.

“I had to actually think about why he would’ve done that and the truth is—I’m an accountant. I did the math. He could never have afforded all the things that we had together on his own, I was a convenience for him. Now that I know all that I don’t miss him at all.”

Blake said, “If that’s how he thought of you, he never deserved to have you in the first place.”

Mallory said, “I’m beginning to see that. So, how about you? What did you do in Atlanta?”

Blake said, “Well, I told you, I’m an architect. I worked on a whole lot of restoration projects and that was really what interested me the most. There’s just something about taking a house and making it new again, allowing its history to live on, that is just incredible and almost unbearably exciting.”

Mallory asked, “Is that part of the reason why you want Gray Oaks so much? I mean I know you want it because Shannon was your grandmother, could it be that you’re trying to restore a history and maybe make a little of your own with her in some way?”

She had hit the nail directly on the head. Blake would never have been able to put those thoughts and feelings into words like she just had and he said, “Yes. I think in a way having the house and being able to restore it would be like being able to get to know her, and by extension maybe my grandfather.”

The two of them sat there in companionable silence not realizing that someone was watching over them.

Oh, oh my. George you should probably hurry up and get here! There’s your grandson, sitting right next door! Well now I feel kind of bad about throwing the poor boy into the wardrobe… And how was I to know he was our grandchild? So he wants the house, and so does she. It’s easy to see the two of them belong together.

So, that no good son of a gun Lonnie wants to sell this house off to a developer, huh? I know what developers do. I still had the television even if I didn’t get out much. I watched that Lifetime channel a lot and they were always showing movies about some greedy developer coming into a small town and tearing it apart.

They could put a lot of things here, there’s not a lot of the original land left but there’s enough of it. It would destroy this whole house and everything that it stood for. They would tear down every moment of my family’s memories and never know what they were destroying… Or care.

Okay then. Let Lonnie bring some developer into my home. If he thought those historical society women ran out in a hurry he hasn’t seen anything yet! I will see to it that Mallory and Blake do not lose out on this house, because I think if they do then they will lose out on each other.

Oh I know, I know George. I meddle far too much. But I’m a lonely old lady living in a house that’s been quiet for far too long. I know you can find your way back to me. I know it. But, in the meantime I might as well enjoy myself a little bit. What’s the fun in being dead if you can’t scare the hell out of a few folks sometimes?

“That must be the developer.” Mallory gestured toward the car pulling into the driveway of the house next door. “That’s quite a fancy rig he’s driving.”

Blake said, “Yes, it is. The car cost more than Lonnie’s asking for the house.”

“If there was ever a time I wish I had won the lottery…”

“I know, me too.”

“I suppose we could always go toss on some sheets and run to the house screaming ‘Get out while you still can or die!’ at him.”

“He’s a developer, they have no fear. I hear they don’t have a heart either.”

“Even vampires have a heart, after all they have to have something to stab the stake into.”

“Developers are different kind of vampire.”

“Oh really? What kind of vampire would that be?”

“The kind that never dies, they just go to a new suburb and regroup.”

Mallory said, “I wish I had known you a long time ago. You are probably the most amusing man on the planet.”

“Oh, and here I thought you were keeping me around for my good looks.”

“You aren’t lacking in looks either.” She looked down in her glass. “Listen, I don’t want to get caught up in something that is bound to end. If you don’t get the house you won’t be staying, I take it.”

“Who said that? I can keep on living at the Peek-a Loo.”

Mallory almost choked. “You’re staying there? My God, don’t you know that that is the motel of sin? Every cheating man in town knows the desk clerk by name and the women who show up are always somebody else’s.”

“I think I heard that. That might explain the gunfire I heard last night right below my window.”

She sputtered laughter. “Either you’re a huge liar or that place has gotten worse over the years. Seriously, I don’t think it really deserves its bad reputation, it’s just rundown and a little ragged around the edges.

“Either way, nobody deserves to have to live there. What would you do if you’re in town?”

“There’s a few places looking for a good restoration man.”

Mallory tilted her chin toward the man walking up to the house next door. “Maybe you could go to work for him since he seems to have plenty of money to spare.”

Blake said, “I think I’d rather not, but thank you.”

Later, they would sit around and talk about what happened next but they would never be able to describe it exactly.

Lonnie had just arrived, his rictus grin firmly in place and his bony hands practically rubbing together at the sight of the expensive foreign car sitting in the driveway. His pleasure did not last very long, and with good reason. The house did indeed pull inward. They could even hear it, there was a sudden inhalation that sounded like a giant monster was drawing breath, then there was a loud cracking sound, almost thunderous in the air.