Better Homes and Hauntings (5 page)

CONTRARY TO POPULAR
belief—meaning Cindy’s belief—Jake wasn’t a womanizer. If anything, he was a serial monogamist. He had a long string of girlfriends whose inability to get him to settle down stretched back to his dorm days. Over the years since what Deacon’s cousin, Dotty, called his “free-for-all” dating period in college, he’d definitely developed a type. It wasn’t so much about build or hair color as a mind-set. He leaned toward driven women, women who liked to spend as much time at the office as he did. Because in general, those women were going to time their “long-term commitment goals” carefully after they built up their careers, and he didn’t feel pressured about proposing after three months.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to settle down; he just
wasn’t ready yet. He liked his life. He liked trying new restaurants every night. He liked being able to drop everything and go skiing or diving for the weekend with Deacon. Or forcing Deacon to leave his office at water-gunpoint and
making
him go skiing or diving. Committed girlfriends, the women who were in it for the long haul, had objections to that sort of thing.

But Cindy. The minute he saw her, he felt as if he’d run out of oxygen. It wasn’t just the fact that she was outrageously, undeniably beautiful. He’d been around a lot of beautiful women, and they’d never affected him like this.

Cindy was unspoiled, unpretentious. He loved the way she didn’t try to cover up her feelings, even when it meant turning that acid tongue on him. He loved that she actually
ate
in front of him during the group’s shared meals. She drank beer. She cursed. She walked around in dusty shirts with smudges on her face. She wasn’t trying to impress him. She wasn’t trying to cover up any flaws. She just
was
. And he knew he could trust her. If she was this rude to his face, she couldn’t possibly do or say anything worse behind his back. The same couldn’t be said about some of his ex-girlfriends, who were so accomplished at masking their emotions (through finishing school or Botox) that he couldn’t guess what was going on in their heads. There was Sophie, whom he’d caught going through his banking statements when she’d asked to use his bathroom. Or Caroline, whom he’d overheard telling her mother that Jake was “boring as hell but a suitable escort for parties.” And then Elizabeth, who had done a full financial and background check on him before orchestrating a meeting at her
friend’s Labor Day party—and then didn’t understand why Jake found that unsettling.

But Cindy kept rejecting him. He didn’t understand it. He’d asked her to join him for a beer and watch the sun set over the bay. She’d said no. He’d asked if he could take her off-island for dinner at his favorite Italian place. She’d said no. He’d snagged a few blooms from the plants Nina was having brought over for her garden plans—prompting sweet, quiet little Nina to threaten him with one of those mini-rake things—and left a pretty bouquet on Cindy’s nightstand. He’d found it later in the trash can in the communal kitchen.

He knew she wasn’t playing coy when she rejected him. She truly, honestly had no interest in him. It was baffling. Most women liked him. Most
people
liked him. He was a likable guy. But Cindy seemed to have had some sort of grudge from the moment they met. Maybe it was a money issue? Could it be that she had a natural aversion to wealthy people after years of cleaning up their messes? That seemed as unfair as people in his circles discriminating against people without money. It wasn’t his fault that his family had been well-off from the time they strolled off the
Mayflower
. He knew it had kept him from some of the fundamental experiences growing up, such as mowing his parents’ lawn, having an embarrassing summer job, or driving a secondhand beater truck. But while it took care of most basic problems—food, shelter, education—it created others. Social competition, discontent, the pressure to keep up with the Joneses. His parents had provided for his basic needs but had
never figured out how to connect with the son whose parenting they’d primarily left to nannies and various coaches. Then again, he knew how
lack
of money had affected Deacon and Dotty, and he was thankful that he’d never had to worry about that. He was even more thankful that the distinction had never caused problems between him and the people he considered family.

But none of this was helpful at the moment, because Cindy was standing in front of him in the second-best guest room, furiously tapping the toe of her sneaker against the floor. “Just what do you think you’re doing, telling my crew that they’re not
allowed
to work in the guest rooms? I have a schedule to keep, Mr. Rumson. And that schedule includes clearing out those rooms before that wall gets knocked out.”

Jake scowled at Cindy, despite the fact that she looked downright delightful in her royal-blue “Cinderella Cleaning Service” T-shirt with a matching slipper-printed bandanna wrapped around her head. “What are you talking about? We’re not knocking any walls down in the guest rooms.”

Cindy pulled a sheaf of papers from her blue, color-coordinated clipboard and showed it to him. She pointed to the big red “APPROVED” stamp at the top of a diagram showing several different shelf units. “I sent Mr. Whitney a proposal for some extra storage rooms to maximize the displays for his collections. He approved of the plans last week.”

“Well, I appreciate Whit’s input. But considering that I’m the architect, how about I decide which walls we knock down?”

Cindy’s blue eyes narrowed. “Or you could listen to what the client wants instead of insisting that you’re right just because you have a certain job title.”

“I’m not insisting I’m right because of a job title, I’m insisting I’m right because I’m actually right!” he exclaimed.

Cindy growled. “I can’t even talk to you when you’re like this!”

“Like what?”

“All arrogant and jackassy.”

“ ‘Jackassy’ isn’t even a word,” he retorted.

Cindy snagged a container of grout cleaner and turned on him with murder in her eyes. Now that Jake thought about it, his correcting the way she insulted him might be the reason Cindy didn’t want to go out with him.

THE SUN BEAT
down on Nina’s shoulders, a pleasant burn that soaked into her skin and chased away the pervasive chill that had plagued her since she’d stepped onto Whitney Island. Perched on her knees, clearing gnarled weeds from the base of the water fountain, with the sound of the waves in the distance and the sun on her back, Nina felt she could breathe deeply for the first time in months.

As intimidating as it was to be so isolated, it also gave Nina a measure of freedom. She was too far from the mainland for her creditors to reach her. Rick and his cronies couldn’t influence what happened to her here. She could finally relax and enjoy getting her hands dirty again.

The six-man day crew she’d hired had arrived at
first light to start clearing away the overgrowth. They’d ferried over that morning with the construction crew, who were swarming the interior of the main house like little worker bees. The construction team was headed by Anthony LaRossa, a sweet old bear of a man who smelled like peppermint candies and Old Spice and had big, fluffy gray eyebrows that came down over his eyes when he spoke.

Anthony had barely recovered from triple-bypass surgery the year before and was therefore the only key member of the staff who was allowed to stay off-island, so he could be near his cardiologist. With his loud, booming laugh and heartfelt promises to direct his crew’s footsteps away from her flower beds, Nina was sure Anthony was going to be her favorite coworker. Or, at minimum, he would be the least crazy.

To be fair, she’d seen more of Anthony than she had of the other island residents all day. Although he’d promised a meeting with “Team Crane” over breakfast, Mr. Whitney had received some sort of important business call around seven that morning and hadn’t been seen since. Jake was holed up in the main house’s library, reviewing blueprints. Cindy had been called away by her crew with questions about furniture for the guest rooms.

Nina’s first night as a resident of Whitney Island had not been a momentous one. Dinner had been a stilted, uncomfortable affair, with the team seated around the long dining table in the men’s dorm, scarfing down takeout Japanese food that Jake had ferried across from the mainland in a cooler. Jake had tried valiantly to get a conversation going, bringing up Deacon’s love for a
particular sashimi bar in Boston near EyeDee’s corporate headquarters and funny stories from Jake’s family’s travels to Kyoto when he was a teenager. But Cindy had glumly picked at her food—when she wasn’t narrowing her eyes at Jake in suspicion.

And Nina had studiously kept her head bent over her plate, unable to make eye contact with Deacon, who was staring at her as if she was some sort of puzzle he was trying to unlock. Maybe he didn’t like people who threw up on his fancy boat? But considering that the ink on their contract was of the nonerasable variety, he could just deal with it until she made an actual termination-worthy error. At which point, Nina would be screwed and possibly homeless.

Right, moving on to a plan that involved making nice with her new boss and not ending up fired and homeless. She would be as personable and professional as possible, and Deacon would have no choice but to love her work. She would stop seeing imaginary shadow people. And she would stop reacting to the island and the people on it like one big exposed nerve.

“It would be a cliché for me to complain that this is what I use as bait to catch real food, right?” Cindy had whispered to Nina. “I mean, I like fish, but I’m more a beer-batter sort of gal.”

“Yes, yes, it would,” she’d whispered back. “But I brought the makings for blueberry waffles
and
my own waffle iron. And yes, I do consider waffle ingredients to be basic survival gear. So if you can hold out until the morning, I can arrange carb compensation.”

“You’re a good woman, and one day, people will
write songs about you,” Cindy had said, poking halfheartedly at her green dragon roll.

Nina had made an airy gesture with her hands. “Yes, the Ballad of the Waffle-teer.”

Cindy giggled, making Nina snicker. And when she’d looked up, Deacon was staring at her again.
Gah!

Deacon had seemed to thaw a bit when the group started making checklists and plans—cooking rotations, the shower schedule, a “first-day to-do list” to determine exactly how over their heads they were with this project. So they’d finished dinner and settled down to brass tacks, each presenting his or her immediate plans for the house—stabilizing or rehabbing the interior structures, salvaging what few furnishings and antiques were left—and how they would work around one another to prevent delays and hissy fits involving power tools and garden implements.

Curled in her solitary iron bed that night, Nina had dreamed she was pulling the sheets tight over her mattress. The feather-tick mattress was hers. The sheets were hers. But the arms stretching out in front of her belonged to someone else. A large diamond flanked by sapphires winked on her ring finger. The sleeves of her dress were a beautifully embroidered blue muslin, with silver stitching at the cuffs. The soft white hands smoothed the counterpane. She was pleased that she was able to provide clean, comfortable rooms for her staff. She knew how hard the servants worked to keep a home running. And while she certainly didn’t need to make up the beds, she found a certain satisfaction in seeing to them herself. She could walk down the rows of rooms, seeing a freshly made bed in each, and know
that she’d done
something
productive with her day. Besides, the servants wouldn’t arrive for a few days anyway. And it seemed inhospitable to welcome them to their new home with bare beds.

She bent over the far corner of the mattress, tucking the sheet tightly. And when she rose, she felt a large hand slide down the small of her back and give her backside a pinch. She squealed, and another hand clapped around her mouth, pressing her back against a broad male chest.

“Well, look at what I found here,” a seductive voice whispered against her ear. “A pretty piece of skirt already bent over the bed.”

A thrill of fear rippled up her spine as those hands slipped around her hips and pressed her bum against his solid frame. Teeth closed gently over her earlobe, tugging insistently. She relaxed into the masculine embrace, sighing as the mouth moved from her ear to her neck. The hand cupped her chin, tilting her head back toward him. The scene changed, and instead of a bright, sunlit room, she was outside in the dark, with the wind whipping at her skirts. The grip around her throat tightened, squeezing the breath from her lungs. She scratched and coughed and fought, but he was just too strong.

Suddenly, the pressure at her throat disappeared. She was falling, tumbling through space until she was underwater, watching waves roll over her head. She tried to swim to the surface, but she was held in place by growing pressure around her legs, tugging her down like an anchor, crawling up her body like greedy, grasping hands until it settled around her throat. She reached
upward, trying to claw her way toward air, toward light, but was unable to make any progress. Now she saw herself, her arm extended over her head in a mockery of a ballerina’s pose. Her delicate blue muslin sleeve fluttered against the water, and she stared at its motion as it slowly turned brown and disintegrated with age. The sleeve rotted away, leaving a grotesque, decaying limb behind, sloughing and dissolving until all that was left were bleached ivory bones reaching up toward the light.

In her head, she could hear screaming.

Nina had bolted upright, clawing at her throat and gasping for breath. She’d fought against the urge to turn on the little bedside lamp. The light would disturb Cindy, an admittedly light sleeper, slumbering just across the hallway, door wide open. Nina didn’t want to explain why, at thirty-one, she needed a night-light. It was just anxiety, she’d assured herself. Just a new job and frayed nerves. She had nightmares all the time, and they had nothing to do with her surroundings. She’d sworn off the Xanax before arriving on Whitney Island, but sitting in the dark room with tension gnawing at her chest, she had wondered whether she should restart the pills.