Ready & Willing (22 page)

“So did you have a chance to talk to the ghost of Silas Summerfield again?” he asked.

When they’d parted ways three nights ago, they’d been no closer to laying out a plan of action than they’d been when they started dinner. Though, speaking for his own part, Nathaniel had at least enjoyed the evening. That wasn’t why he’d asked Audrey out again, though. Or rather, why he hadn’t suggested they meet for dinner again, since he wasn’t asking her out, no way. She was a married woman after all. Dammit. They’d simply come to a mutual agreement to get together again after Audrey had spoken again to her ghost, and—

Her ghost, he repeated derisively to himself. He still couldn’t believe he could think that with a straight face. He still couldn’t believe he was buying into the whole haunted house thing in the first place. He, a man of utter pragmatism, was suddenly relying on a phantom from the great beyond to return balance—or, at the very least, warmth—to his life. And the plan upon parting ways with Audrey the other night was to see if that phantom could use his supernatural position to find out something more about why signs pointed to Edward Dryden, while Nathaniel rechecked his natural sources to see if they could do the same.

As for himself, he’d discovered nothing from his detective that he hadn’t already been told about Edward. Just as he had known he would uncover nothing he hadn’t already been told. When he did a background check on people, it was thorough. He had a team of unsavory PIs to whom he paid way too much money to make certain of that. So if he and Audrey were going to find out how to rescue his currently unavailable soul, it would have to come through supernatural means.

“I did speak to Silas, actually,” she said after swallowing. “At first, he wasn’t much help and kept insisting the link was Edward. When I told him you were sure that wasn’t it, he called you a—” She halted abruptly, threw Nathaniel an uneasy smile, then hurried on, “He got a little perturbed and said he’d poke around some more.”

“And did he?”

She nodded. “Last night, I had a dream that he and I were sharing a glass of port in his bedroom.”

Nathaniel’s eyebrows shot up at that. “You were in his room?”

And why did he care? What difference did it make? Not only was she only dreaming, the guy in the dream was a ghost. Not to mention a hundred-and-something years old.

“Well, it’s not like it was the first time,” she said. “I woke up in his bed that first night he was at the house with me.”

Hmm,
Nathaniel thought. Maybe it hadn’t been three years since she’d had sex. Maybe it had only been a week. Did dream sex satisfy a person the way real sex did? Certainly, it was safer and there were considerably fewer strings attached, and it could go on for a lot longer, and—

And what the hell was he thinking? Jeez, one erotic corndog episode, and he’d turned into a jealous lover. Jealous of his great-great-whatever grandfather, no less. That was just . . . weird.

He made himself focus on the matter at hand. “So you woke up in my grandfather’s bed,” he said, telling himself he did
not
sound jealous.

“You sound jealous,” she said with a smile.

“I do not sound jealous,” he denied.

“Yeah, you do.” Her smile grew broader. “What’s the matter? Envious because guys in Silas’s time may have gotten more action, since they knew better than modern men how to treat a lady?”

He nodded. “Right. By denying them the vote and the right to own property. That’s the way to win a woman’s heart all right.” Before she could sidetrack him more—or make him feel more jealous—he continued, “Could we get back to the matter of what you dreamed last night?”

Unless, of course, she’d dreamed about having sex with his great-great-whatever grandfather, in which case, Nathaniel was going to need to find a place to be sick, because that was just too gross to think about.

“He gave me another name,” she said. “He’s not sure how it’s significant, or how it ties in, or who the guy is, if he’s even anyone. But he said the name Nicholas Pearson kept circling in his head. And he said the last time a name circled in his head like that, it was Edward Dryden’s. But he’d been able to find out who Edward Dryden was, and he can’t figure out who Nicholas Pearson is.”

“Guess the afterlife doesn’t have access to Google, huh?”

“Evidently not. But I do.”

“And?”

“It’s too common a name. I got more than ten thousand hits.”

“Did any of them say, ‘Nicholas Pearson is a notorious murderer who just invested in a downtown Louisville development that cost a man his soul’?”

She smiled at that. And Nathaniel tried not to notice how it softened her features and lit up her eyes and made him want to lean across the table and cover her mouth with his.

Obviously, Audrey Magill wasn’t the only one who had gone too long without sex. Because the last time he’d reacted this strongly to a woman this soon after meeting her had been . . .

Never, he realized. He’d never responded to a woman the way he found himself responding to Audrey Magill.

“Alas, no,” she said. “But there was a Nicholas Pearson who pitched a no-hitter in the Peytona Little League last year.”

“I don’t know,” Nathaniel said, telling himself to get a grip and stop thinking about Audrey the way he kept thinking about her. “He sounds like he could be our guy.”

Instead of laughing at that—or at least chuckling, as he’d hoped she would—she sobered.

“There is something else I could do, Nathaniel.”

She so seldom spoke his first name, that hearing it made something in his chest that had been pulled too tight start to loosen. And then . . . yes, there it was. Warmth. In his stomach. Then his chest. And she wasn’t even touching him. He would have said it was only the sort of warmth brought on by a chemical reaction to a sexual attraction, the kind that was only felt in the gut because something in the head had sparked it. But there was something else to this heat, something that went beyond both belly and brain, something that made it linger, if only for a moment. And then, just as he’d feared, it began to wither, because Audrey suddenly looked very sad, and there was nothing to bring warmth from that.

“You know my husband was a cop,” she said, her voice softening to the point where he had to lean across the table to hear her.

He nodded, but said nothing. Mostly because he honestly had no idea what to say.

His silence seemed to encourage instead of deter her, though, because she continued, “His partner, Leo Rubens, was promoted to detective last year. I could ask him to look into both Edward Dryden and Nicholas Pearson. Maybe him being a cop, he could have access to information you wouldn’t have.”

Nathaniel doubted it. He’d put his money on unsavory PIs every time. Hadn’t she ever read Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett? Sam Spade and Nick Charles were always one step ahead of the flatfoots. The flatfeet. The guys on the police force.

“Do you see him often?” Nathaniel asked.

She shook her head. “Not really. Not anymore. But I know he’s still at the same precinct.”

Nathaniel wasn’t sure what to make of Audrey’s estrangement from her husband’s partner. So he decided not to think about it. For now.

“The last time was . . .” She hesitated, mulling that.

“Wow, I guess it was when Lucy had her bat mitzvah. That was . . .” She halted again, presumably to do some quick mental math. “Almost two years ago. I got an invitation to the party to celebrate Leo’s promotion last year but I didn’t go. I had something going on that night. I don’t remember what.”

Nathaniel couldn’t help but think that was important. Weren’t partners on the police force supposed to be as close as brothers? Even closer sometimes? He didn’t think that was just a TV affectation. Audrey and her husband had probably seen a lot of this Leo and his family when Sean Magill was alive. But she hadn’t seen her husband’s partner for almost two years and hadn’t attended a party to commemorate what had to have been a major milestone for the man. Did that mean she was starting to put the past behind her? Or did it mean the past was still so painful for her to think about that she couldn’t face any reminders?

And again, why did it matter?

It mattered, he immediately answered himself, because Audrey was a nice person. And there were precious few of those in the world today. It mattered because she shouldn’t have had to suffer such a massive loss. It mattered because he shouldn’t have to ask her to do something she clearly did not want to do. And it mattered, he made himself admit further, because he liked her.

He liked her a lot.

“What do you think?” she asked when he didn’t reply.

Although it should have been an easy enough question to answer, Nathaniel wasn’t sure how to answer it. Or maybe he just didn’t want to. Because, of course, the answer should be yes. Yes, she should go talk to Detective Leo Rubens to see if he could shed any additional light on this mystery, the solving of which would mean the return of Nathaniel’s soul. But asking her to do that would mean asking her to stir up memories and feelings she obviously didn’t want to stir up, otherwise she wouldn’t have lost touch with the Rubens family in the first place.

Did Nathaniel want to do that to her? No. He didn’t. But the reason for that wasn’t just because he didn’t want Audrey to suffer. It was also because, if she was beginning to put the past behind her, he didn’t want to bring it front and center again. Not just because it would make things difficult for Audrey. Because it would make things difficult for him, too. Because in spite of all his admonishments to the contrary, Nathaniel really did want to get involved with her. Involved with a married woman. Even if she wasn’t really married anymore.

Man, he really was soulless, he thought, if he wanted to make Audrey forget about the man she married and whom she still loved.

No, not soulless,
he immediately told himself. At least, not for that reason. He didn’t want to make her forget Sean Magill or remove him from her life. He just wanted to help her create new memories with someone else. To find room for someone else in her life. Someone like maybe him.

If anything, Nathaniel’s weird feelings tonight kind of reassured him that his soul must not have gotten too far. Because a man without a soul couldn’t be falling for a woman the way he was falling for Audrey. Could he? And he wouldn’t feel guilty about how doing so meant sharing her with another man.

“That would be great, if you could talk to Leo,” he finally said, striving for a carelessness he was nowhere close to feeling. “If you don’t mind. And if it wouldn’t be any trouble.”

After only a moment’s hesitation, she shook her head. “No, it’s no trouble,” she assured him. But she said nothing about whether or not she minded.

Of course it wouldn’t be any trouble, Nathaniel thought. It would only be painful. And difficult. And very possibly traumatic. And while she was going through all that in an effort to save his soul, he would pick up the phone and call a guy named Duke, ask him to run a couple of checks and then bill Nathaniel for his time.

“Hey, you feel like walking?” he asked impulsively, for no other reason than he was suddenly restless, and she didn’t seem to have any more interest in her food . . . since she’d pushed the tray away the minute she’d started talking about her husband’s old partner.

She looked startled by the question, but nodded. “Yeah, sure. I should probably walk off some of that elephant ear.”

He rose and reached for her tray, moving the little white box of fudge to the table, before picking the tray up along with his own and carrying both to a nearby trash can to empty them. When he turned back around, he saw that Audrey, contrary to what she’d just told him, was still sitting at the table, running her thumb idly over the box of fudge, as if she’d intended to do something with it, then was waylaid by something else. Her thoughts, judging by the look of her. She was staring down at the box, her dark brows arrowed downward, her expression grim.

The Lynyrd Skynyrd wannaband had moved to a mellow song, one Nathaniel had never heard before, so it was easy to tune it out. Until, as he was ambling back over toward Audrey, some lyrics drifted into his ear, saying something about life having taken the singer everywhere, but that there was no place like home. It was a surprisingly pleasant lyric, even if it was followed by something about shegators. But what really surprised Nathaniel was how much he found himself identifying with it. Even though he’d never really stayed in one dwelling long enough to think of it as a home. He and his mother had barely stayed one step ahead of eviction when he was a kid, and as an adult, he’d gradually moved into bigger and better places while awaiting that one big score of a condo at 1400 Willow. But even after living there for almost two years, the place didn’t feel like home to him. He’d begun to think no place ever would. So why, suddenly, the big homecoming epiphany over a song he’d never even heard before?

Man, he was losing a lot more than his soul if he was enjoying plastic utensils and fried food and identifying with Lynyrd Skynyrd lyrics. Forget about supernatural forces. He should be a lot more worried about his state of mind.

As he drew nearer to the table—nearer to Audrey—she looked up at him, and, for a moment, she honestly looked like she wasn’t sure where she was. She’d been that deep in thought. Then she managed a small smile and stood. He watched as she tucked the fudge into the oversized handbag she slung over one shoulder, then he stretched his arm out to the right, a silent indication that she should precede him. When she did, he placed his hand in the small of her back, a gesture he’d completed so often, with so many women, he didn’t even think about it anymore.

He thought about it this time.

Because, this time, heat seeped into him at even that simple touch. Only instead of making him feel better this time, it only reminded him how very cold he was whenever Audrey wasn’t around. And not just physically, either. Not lately.