The Ghost of Christmas Present (3 page)

"No, you haven't!"

"Yes. I have."

"Say something to me in...no wait.
That's not right." She blinked. "You don't sound two hundred years
old."

He bit back a grin and wished he could
smooth away the silken strand of hair that had flopped over her
eye.

"What manner of speech would the good
mistress have me speak? I vow my life has seen many. Wish you that
I converse as a rebellious traitor to the crown? A damn Yankee? A
really swell World War II vet? How about a real cool cat, or maybe
a groovy dude? Of course I can be awesome and radical, and even
bad, but you're such a def chick I can probably just be
myself."

When he finally wound down she had the
goofiest, most endearing smile on her face he'd ever
seen.

"Point taken," she said.

He tried not to be smug.

"But you don't
look
two hundred years
old, and I don't mean in age. Don't you guys walk around in shrouds
or the clothes you were buried in or something?"

Jared rolled his eyes, then leaned back
and sprawled his legs out toward the fire. "Thank Hollywood for
that myth. But guys like Shakespeare and Dickens started the
rumor." A sudden mischievous urge overwhelmed him. "Would you
believe me if I looked like this?"

Alane again choked on her wine and she
stared at her ghost through a blur of teary eyes. He rose from the
matching recliner clad in gray, skin tight knee breeches, hosiery,
and shoes with buckles. His heretofore short, yet shaggy hair was
several inches longer, pulled back in a que with a black ribbon. A
vest to mid-thigh and cutaway jacket finished the picture of a man
who could have signed the Constitution. With the flick of a lacy
cuff, he bowed.

"I never powder my hair. Attracts
bugs."

In the blink of an eye he wore a
Confederate officer's uniform, then a zoot suit, then a pair of
chinos and a tee shirt with a pack of cigarettes rolled in the
sleeve and hair slicked into a ducktail. He faded into bell-bottoms
and a tie-dyed shirt with below-the-shoulder hair, then ended in
loose cut jeans, logo tee shirt and a baseball hat on backwards.
Before she could breathe, he morphed back into his boot-cut jeans,
oxford shirt, and cabled crewneck sweater, as devastatingly
handsome in that simple attire as he’d been in all his other
personas. Too handsome for her own good.

"Sorry," he shrugged with a smile that
was anything but sorry. "I don't get a chance to show off
much."

Alane closed her mouth, wondering
vaguely how long it had been hanging open.

"Poi...," she cleared her throat,
"...point well taken." She looked at her nearly empty wine glass,
then set it aside and pushed it further away. "How did
you...become...," she wiggled her fingers at him, at a loss for
words.

"Heartbeat challenged?" he supplied.
She cringed on the inside and damned the wine for making her so
witty.

She gave him a weak smile.

"I don't need a demonstration, by the
way," she hastened to add.

He lifted his head and grinned, but his
smile didn't have the usual megawatts behind it. He
sighed.

"Oh, another time. Young mistress must
be sorely wearied from her lengthy journey. Retire to your
bedchamber and sleep well this night. We shall speak again on the
morrow."

Slowly, very slowly, he stretched out a
hand toward her. When she forced herself not to back away he passed
his hand along her cheek. Instead of the cold, clammy feeling she
expected, her cheek felt as if a warm, summer breeze had kissed
it.

Then he was gone. 

CHAPTER THREE

Jared watched her sleep. The wine had
hastened that process, he was sure, but even at that she'd lain
awake far into the night, watching for someone who wouldn't allow
himself to be seen.

Ah, but she was lovely. For the first
time in more years than he'd let himself count, he gave in to the
ache for the gentle touch of a woman. Just her touch. A finger on
his brow to swipe his hair from his eyes. Hands on his shoulders to
rub away the knots there. A loving palm on the cheek to remind him
to shave.

He closed his eyes, imagining it, but
the mere thought hurt like a dull blade through the
breast.

He moved to the bed and sank down
beside her. Focusing all his will, knowing it would cost him
strength, he concentrated and traced the tips of his fingers along
her jaw.

Sweet Gabriel in heaven, the feel of
her shot through his soul like a drug. He held the connection,
savoring the moment, until his strength began to ebb.

He left part of his soul behind when he
lifted his fingers from her face.

Closing his eyes, he dropped his head
in denial. For nearly two centuries he had walked this earth alone,
at times feeling his loneliness, at times enjoying his solitude.
But during those years he'd remained constant in accepting his
fate. In life, he'd been unwilling to give of himself, and because
of that his wife and unborn child had died at his hands. He hadn’t
been able to give the ultimate gift - himself - and his wife had
died trying to love him anyway.

He deserved the curse her mother had
laid upon him as he lay, broken at the foot of the stairs, his
wife's twisted body tangled with his.

And now, when no chance of love existed
for him, he looked at the sleeping woman lying curled on her side
and knew for the first time what selfless, all-encompassing love
felt like.

He'd fallen in love, and feared it
would be a process that would last throughout an
eternity.

In the space of a heartbeat he walked
the frigid shores of the lake, unable to feel the cold nor smell
the perfume of the trees.

He would give the earth and the moon
and the stars, were it in his power, to have but one day to love
Alane Travis with more than his heart, his mind and his soul. To
feel her head against his chest, her breath against his face. To
smell the scent she wore and taste the sweetness of her
kiss.

He would give any wealth he had, but
all he had was a solitary

non-existence. A vacuum in which he'd
lived with no feelings or emotions for decade upon
decade.

Now, God help him, the vacuum had been
broken.

*******

Alane rolled over and came slowly
awake, trying to remember exactly where she was. Oh yes. The
cabin.

Her eyes flew open and she searched the
room as memories of the night before returned. Surely it was a
dream. Surely she hadn't spent the evening drinking wine and
conversing with a ghost.

Her first impulse was to curl into a
tight little ball and pull the covers over her head, but Mother
Nature forced her to climb out of bed and find her way to the
bathroom in her hopelessly wrinkled clothes.

The living room looked
normal. No sign of shimmering air or guys she could see through.
The kitchen looked just as she'd left it the night before.
Groceries still on the table. The bottle of wine sat at the edge, a
testament that she hadn't dreamed the whole thing. Then again,
considering how little wine was left in the bottle, she may have
dreamed
part
of
it.

Moving on to the bathroom, she peered
around the corner, half-expecting him to float through the wall.
Once she determined the room was empty, she rushed through the
necessary activities before brushing her teeth and dousing her face
with a splash of cold water.

Feeling a little more in charge, with
no sign of the resident ectoplasm, she finger-combed her hair and
shuffled into the kitchen to start her morning IV drip of
caffeine.

After putting away the rest
of the groceries, throwing a conglomeration into the Crockpot for
dinner, then pouring herself a fresh cup of coffee, she began to
wonder if the whole thing really had been just a result of too much
wine and a long day of driving. After all, the guy really was too
good-looking to be true, with all that black-brown hair and
greenish, brownish eyes. Really, had anybody
that
good-looking ever really walked
the earth? And if that's the way they grew them two hundred years
ago, she’d been born in the wrong century. Besides, if he was real,
that meant she was attracted to a dead man. And she was much too
level-headed to ever do something that foolish. Nah, she'd dreamed
that one up for sure.

"No hangover?"

Alane jerked as if she'd been shot,
this time slinging a mug full of coffee against the wall in a sort
of impressionistic caffeine mural.

"Holy crap! I'm going to make you wear
a bell around your neck if you don't stop that!"

He shrugged innocently and said, "It's
not on purpose. Honest."

Alane snatched a wet dishcloth from the
sink and started mopping the wall.

"What do you want anyway?" Her nerves
felt like rubber bands stretched to the max. When he didn't answer
she glanced at him over her shoulder.

He stood there, hurt evident in his
eyes, though he tried to mask it with a careless shrug.

The coffee stains and wet dishcloth
forgotten, she wanted to bite her tongue in two for snapping at
him.

"I thought you might need a hangover
remedy. I had my share of them before I took the ultimate
cure."

Irreverent. She was vacationing with an
irreverent ghost who had a face and body to die for.

"No! I don't! And don't you
ever even
think
that again!"

"Excuse me? What?" Alane asked, afraid
his answer would be what she thought it was.

"To die for. I am
not
to die for. Have you
any idea what you're saying when you use that term?" He towered -
hovered - over her, his rage mingled with an underlying fear she
didn't understand.

She generated more than a little rage
of her own.

"I didn't say anything. I
thought it. Which means you've been reading my thoughts like some
kind of...of...paranormal eavesdropper! Well, I don't appreciate
it, Casper, so stay the hell out of my head!" She threw the
dripping cloth through his head, hitting the kitchen window with
a
splat
and making
one more mess to clean up.

The nerve of him! The unmitigated gall!
If she could get her hands around that vaporous neck of his, she'd
choke the life right out of... Oh!

She speared him with a
glare, sure he'd be highly amused if he read
those
thoughts, but he didn't look
amused. He looked as angry as she.

"There are very few things in life 'to
die for,' Alane. And I am certainly not one of them."

"That's just a... Nobody ever means it
when... Oh, for pity's sake, why am I on the defensive? You're the
one in the wrong." She narrowed her eyes and searched his face.
"Have you been wandering around in my head all along?"

He snapped his mouth shut and had the
decency to look at least a little uncomfortable.

"No."

"No?"

"Not the whole time."

"Not the whole time? When were you not?
When I was asleep?"

When his gaze dropped to the floor, she
had her answer.

She stomped right through him and
snatched up the dishcloth again, biting back a gasp and fighting to
ignore the melting warmth she felt as her body passed through his.
From the corner of her eye she saw him turn and watch her start
back to work on the coffee-stained wall.

"I'm sorry about the eavesdropping," he
said in a voice that weakened her knees.

She rinsed out the cloth and started on
the floor.

"It's easy to forget one's manners when
you spend so much time alone."

She worked her way halfway under the
table, then around to the other side of the wall.

"Will you forgive me?"

She pulled herself to her feet, walked
through him again as if he weren't there, then turned on the water
to rinse the cloth. When she turned back around to finish the job,
he was gone.

*******

Alane sat, curled in the corner of the
couch, wearing three pairs of socks, two sweat shirts, sweat pants,
wrapped in a blanket, with a sketchpad propped against her knees. A
virtual bonfire roared in the fireplace and a charcoal pencil
dangled, forgotten, from her fingers.

Maybe she'd been too hard on him,
ignoring his apology the way she had. He did have a point about
spending so much time alone and all. And it would be awfully hard
to resist reading someone's mind.

She wiggled into another position and
kicked off the blanket.

He'd been gone since morning. All day
long she'd kept expecting him to show up and shock another ten
years off her life. She'd finished cleaning the kitchen, unloaded
her paints and other materials from the car, as well as a forgotten
bag of groceries. She'd unpacked, brought in enough firewood for
the night, then spent the last several hours trying to sketch
something - anything - that wasn't the face of her
ghost.