Haunt Me (6 page)

Damn. He made accepting his help sound easy—and tempting. “I really want to say yes.” It would be nice to have a friend, nicer still, to know the house was being taken care of.

“So say yes, Mac.” He waggled his eyebrows in a playful fashion.

Something in her relaxed, and laughing, she pointed her ale bottle at him. “I’ll say yes if you promise to not go overboard. It’s a generous offer, but the window and the pizza really are more than enough. I don’t want to cut into your life.”

“Deal.” He clinked his bottle to hers. “Okay, one more slice, and then I’ll get to work on fixing that window for you.”

Her smile faltered. She’d forgotten all about the repairs and broken glass.
Yes, dingbat. He came by to be neighborly, not to date.

“You okay?” A frown deepened the lines on his forehead.

“Yep. Forgot for a minute why you brought pizza over.” Sometimes honesty was better. It reminded her she wasn’t supposed to be interested in him, and that as soon as they were done being neighborly, she could get back to work. Of course, it didn’t explain the disappointment scrabbling through her.

“Can I let you in on a little secret?” Justin dropped his voice and leaned closer.

Intrigued, she stretched toward him. Was he flirting with her? “Yes?”

“You don’t need a reason for us to have pizza.” His eyes crinkled at the corner.

A thrill went through her.
He
is
flirting
. It had been so long since she’d indulged, she barely recognized it. Now, face-to-face with a handsome man, with only a hairbreadth separating their mouths, her heart did a crazy little jig.

“No?” She tempted fate.

“No, ma’am.” He hovered, close enough to kiss.

She shivered in anticipation. Everything in her seemed focused on the way his lips shaped the words, the hint of his Southern accent that tinged the “ma’am,” and the woodsy, masculine scent filling her nostrils at his nearness. The distance between them shrank, but when his gaze dipped to her mouth, she froze.

His brows climbed. “You all right?”

More than a little embarrassed by her response, she glanced around. Of course he wasn’t going to kiss her. Hell, she hadn’t showered or done her hair or managed to be more than barely civil. What was she doing? The last thing she needed was to get tangled up in a distraction.

She cleared her throat and shifted back. “I’m fine. Thanks for the pizza, and for the window repair—I’m going to get back to work.”

Oh God, she needed to get away from the too-physical closeness before she did something she’d regret.

Like reach out and plant a kiss on Justin Kent.

Chapter Three

Jackpot.

Justin had expected some sort of structure was buried under the overgrown garden at Summerfield, but what he found took his breath away. He threw the handful of kudzu he’d hacked off and backed up, eyeing a marble column of a once-hidden gazebo. Beautiful. And just like the one he’d sketched in his office a couple of weeks ago.

Over the last several days, he’d made good on his offer to Mac to clean up her place. After replacing the window, fixing the wiring, and ordering a new water pump, he’d managed to find a few free hours to work in her garden. He’d promised to keep the noise down to a dull roar so she could write. Despite the reservations she maintained, keeping up his end of the bargain had gone a long way toward softening her attitude toward him and the town.

Being at Summerfield also meant he could keep an eye on some of the locals when they dropped in—most came with casseroles and good intentions. He’d let them in, and even though he knew it annoyed Mac to have her writing time interrupted, she’d proven to be a trooper. Every single one of those visitors left with a smile and a thumbs-up in Justin’s direction.

MacKenzie Dillon was charming the town.

As for her other visitors, high school kids out to egg the house or set up tricks, those he sent away with a knowing glare. The local teens found it difficult to play pranks when Justin knew each and every one of them—and their parents. Damn Jock and her ideas. Mac wasn’t about to get scared out of town by rumors of ghosts or obnoxious teens.

Befriending Mac might have started out as a good idea to help the town achieve its goal of being the Most Haunted Town in Virginia, but Justin found he liked her—genuinely liked her.

As an added bonus, under his care, Summerfield was blossoming.

After their pizza night, he’d started in the northwest corner of the walled garden, attacking the over abundance of greenery. Old Katherine hadn’t allowed anyone on her property for so long that nature had reclaimed the original garden. He’d recognized wisteria, honeysuckle, and crabgrass, but the rest was an endless tangle of vegetation woven together like some hybridization. Working his way around the perimeter, he’d managed to free the hedges from the choking vines, then had set out to uncover the choked yard.

“It’s gorgeous.” From behind, Mac’s husky voice wrapped around him like an unexpected caress.

Glancing over his shoulder, he grinned. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” He’d done a lot of restorations over the years, but this was a treasure. Odd how it looked just like the gazebo he’d drawn up. Vines were still wrapped around the column, but he suspected once he cleared them away, the rest of the gazebo would be the same lovely stone. He stepped in and looked up, but couldn’t make out the roof.

The garden seemed to have swallowed the structure whole. He’d have to battle his way to the heart of it. But with one column exposed, he was more than ready to fight.

“How did you know this was in here?” Mac came to stand next to him, the citrusy hint of her perfume tickling his nostrils as she leaned in to touch the marble.

“I knew there had to be something. This garden—it’s got a wall. A lot of the stories about Summerfield refer to the gardens, which meant at some point this had to have been landscaped.”

Sweat trickled down his face and he wiped it away with a dust-covered arm.

“Do you want to come inside and cool off?”

Her question drew his attention down to the dirt, grime, and grass sticking to his sweaty body. “I’m not really fit company for indoors, and I’m not supposed to be interrupting you.”

“Technically, I interrupted you,” she said, smiling. “I’ll get you something cold to drink.”

As she headed back to the house, he cast a surreptitious glance at her. Concern jerked at his conscience. Mac appeared a little paler and maybe even a little thinner than the day before. Over the last week, whenever he dropped by to work on a project, she’d been busily typing away on her laptop. If anything, the list of half-finished work on the house kept growing. She seemed to be wearing herself out, but it wasn’t from fixing her house.

He walked over to the truck and pulled out the last bottle of water from the slushy, melted ice water and placed it in the bed of the truck. Sucking in a deep breath, he tipped the whole cooler over his head, sluicing off the dust and grass clippings, and cooling down considerably. By the time Mac returned with two tall glasses of tea, he was at least somewhat clean. He blotted his face with his T-shirt, then accepted the glass she held out to him with a smile. “You’re a lifesaver.”

“No, I just make a mean glass of tea,” she said. The sun reflected off his truck window, casting a glow on her face, and she squinted into the brightness.

He motioned to her porch. “Let’s get you out of the sun.”

“I think I should be the one offering that.” But she led the way to the porch and settled onto the swing.

He checked the railing—solid—before leaning on it. The house, like the woman in front of him, seemed fraught with contradictions.

“So, what other stories about my house do you know?” She crossed one leg over the other and leaned forward on the swing, her expression rapt.

“Just the local lore, really. The Summerfield Curse—if you can call it that. Don’t you know any of the stories about the house?”

“A few. I’m aware of the family side of things and what I read in the books I picked up.” She shrugged. “With the deadline, I haven’t really had time to go through Katherine’s things to learn more about her personally. She was my grandmother’s older sister, one of four sisters. All the girls married but Katherine. I called my mother after the lawyer notified me of the inheritance, and she seemed as surprised as I was that I ended up with the place.”

“Any idea why Katherine would have left Summerfield to a relative she barely knew?”

“No idea. I only met her once.”

She didn’t quite look him in the eye when she said that; instead, her gaze slid past him to the gazebo beyond. It didn’t mean she was lying—but he definitely had the sense that she held something back.

“I have these vague images from a visit here when I was seven,” she continued. “You know, the bland, ordinary, everyone-is-there sort of half-memory of a lot of old people sitting around, and you’re the kid who has to sit on the carpet and hush because the adults are talking.” She hunched her shoulders up. “I feel awful saying that because she gave me this great opportunity. I need to get to know Katherine better. There’s a box of old diaries I’ve left in the kitchen since I moved in that I haven’t gone through yet. It seems a violation of her privacy to read her journals.”

Rubbing a hand against the back of his neck, he stretched. “Well, to get the whole story, I recommend heading down to the diner or the beauty shop. Mrs. Cartwright and Mrs. Beagle are the collective memory of the whole town. The pieces I know are that the house was built for a wealthy landowner’s mistress in the mid-to-late seventeen hundreds. It was all a great scandal. Everyone knew, but most pretended not to. The rumor is the wall was erected to keep the mistress in rather than others out.” A chill curled up his spine and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up.

“That’s creepy. One of the books Andie recommended talked about a love spell gone wrong. Think maybe the landowner had some black magic to go with his mistress?” Mac shivered and stared past him to the wall.

“Witch legends are about as popular as ghosts in these parts. We use them to scare the kids onto the straight and narrow.”

She gave him a skeptical look. “I can’t imagine using a horror story to scare a kid into behaving.”

“No?” He shrugged. “You’ve never covered your feet with the blanket in case the boogeyman reached out to grab you? Or made sure the closet door wasn’t shut because of monsters?” For most of Jock’s childhood, either he or one of their brothers had to check under her bed for monsters every night.

A shiver betrayed the slight shake of her head. “Not on purpose, I don’t think. But if you don’t believe in ghosts, why are you a part of the haunted-town project?”

“It’s commercial—not faith. Besides, people like to be scared. It’s why haunted houses go up around Halloween and horror movies are so popular.”

Tension tightened the lines around her eyes. “So you really don’t believe in ghosts?”

“Not at all,” he said, but he tried to keep his tone light. They’d been having a good conversation; he didn’t want to ruin it. “Ghost stories, witch tales, it’s all a way to explain the dark and our natural, human fear of it. There are no such things as ghosts.”

Mac leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees. In that position, the air of fragility around her seemed emphasized. The slant of the sun hit the window behind her head and the light flared. For the barest second, he saw an after-image of another woman with the same troubled expression—it was like seeing double. He squinted, shifted, and suddenly the double image was gone.
Weird
. That had happened before, the first time he’d met Mac. Had to be the way the afternoon light hit the windows on the house.

“I’ve seen a ghost,” she said suddenly.

The certainty in her voice sent prickles of ice up his spine. “What?” Was she joking with him? Or serious? The wryness of her expression didn’t elaborate.

“You heard me.” She glanced down at her tea and picked at an imaginary thread on the cuff of her denim shorts.

“Ghosts aren’t real, Mac,” he said, forcing himself not to be harsh. “They provide an easy answer to what goes bump in the night, but they aren’t real.” And it irritated the hell out of him that she would think they were.

“Wow, considering why you wanted to buy this place, I guess I didn’t think you’d be such a skeptic.” Lightness echoed in her words, but disappointment turned her smile down, and she stood. “Look at the ugly gates—have you ever seen anything like them around here? Some poor woman was held captive here. Trapped in this house. When ugly things happen in places, the memory of it lingers. That’s not really a stretch.”

“It’s a hell of a stretch. It’s a house—things happened. Maybe it does have a painful history, but that doesn’t mean it’s haunted.”

“Explain the gates. I’ve checked—those hinges were chiseled out on purpose. Why do that?”

“Maybe they warped.” They were metal. Winters brought ice and snow. Cold air could twist even iron. “A good part of this place is in disrepair. So you’re working with flimsy evidence if you think some broken gates and an old wives’ tale makes for a ghost.” Raking a hand through his hair, he shook his head. Mac seemed practical and down to earth most of the time. Focused—he liked the determination and the grit—but this pandering to the local mythology? No. He got enough of that from Jock’s “psychic” insights.

“Wow. That’s pretty harsh.”

It took him a moment to register the tight lines around her mouth and her frown. Disappointment flared in her eyes, and his jaw locked.

“I’m sorry.” Even if the words tasted like gravel on his tongue. “I’m not a big fan of supernatural explanations for totally normal occurrences. It creates a lot of drama and hysteria for no reason.”

“In your opinion.” She raised her brows in challenge.

Justin gritted his teeth. Would it kill him to agree with her? Probably not. Still, it didn’t feel right. “In my opinion.” He could concede that much, but felt the need to add, “And in my experience.”

Mac blew out a breath. “So you are professional debunker of ghosts?”

“No.” He didn’t laugh, because it would have been rude. Her outrage, however, returned the color to her cheeks and lit the fire in her eyes. Pissing her off may not have been wise, but he did like the results.

She wasn’t done. “So you’ve proven ghosts weren’t there when someone else saw them? Or felt them?”

“Mac…”

“Yes or no?” she demanded, and bounced to her feet.

“No, I haven’t disproven the existence of ghosts. Hard to disprove something that isn’t real.” If she wanted to argue, he didn’t have a problem with that. Especially not when she appeared healthier than she had when she’d first come outside.

“Then your experience is your opinion.” Mac grinned, enormously satisfied with her conclusion.

He sucked in a breath. Everything about her was vibrant, alive, and passionate. God, she would be great in bed.

Her triumph vanished behind a wary expression when she caught him gazing at her. “What?”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You’re staring.”

“You’re beautiful.” He didn’t see any reason to deny it. When her mouth opened and then snapped shut, he grinned wider. Getting to know her had been fun. Throwing her off her game—that was even better. “If you want me to fix your gates, I will—unless you think someone’s going to lock you up.”

At his tease, her shocked silence turned into a scowl, but she couldn’t disguise the twinkle in her eyes. “I don’t know. I’ve been feeling pretty chained up lately, especially to my computer. It’s like I can’t
not
write. I’ve never written like this before. I go to sleep and I’m thinking about the book. I wake up thinking about the book. I swear I’m dreaming about it, even when I’m awake.”

He wanted to reach for her, but unfortunately she’d backed up a step. He preferred her crowding into his space. “Mac…”

“I bet you think I’m crazy.”

“When you do what you love, it gets like that.” He couldn’t really judge her. He’d been spending hours working around her place just to catch a glimpse of her. The thought sobered his amusement almost immediately. Where the hell had that thought come from?

“Thank you.”

Still puzzling over his own attitude adjustment, Justin frowned. “For what?”

“For being so damn nice. Even if you don’t believe in ghosts.” She rose and held her hand out for his glass. “Do you want more tea?”

No. He wanted a whole lot more than tea. But he wasn’t going to let his mind go there. He had a responsibility to his siblings to make good on their father’s will. Getting Mac to open up to the idea of using Summerfield as a tour stop on Penny Hollow’s haunted house tour had to be his focus, not Mac herself. “I need to get back to work. I want to see how much that structure I can free up. Besides, you have a book to write.”