The Ghosts of Tullybrae House (22 page)

Before leaving, Dean stopped by the library. He opened the door, knocking on the frame as he popped his head inside.

“Hey. So I’ll pick you up at seven?” The casual tone failed to mask the eagerness that was evident in his countenance.

“I’ll be ready,” she answered, affecting enthusiasm.

“Great, see you then.”

She watched him go. There was a visible bounce in his step, and when he reached the van outside, his jovial banter with Adam and Sophie sounded a little too jovial. It was as she suspected—Dean clearly was hoping for more than the “just friends” outing they’d agreed to.

The awkward feeling he’d dredged up with his quick visit stayed with her the rest of the evening. Her repeated self-reassurances did little to assuage her discomfort.

“You like Dean. He’s a good guy. Stop being paranoid.”

Nor did her reassurances assuage Cael. The peaceful, quiet intimacy they’d shared in the library vanished. Now, he sulked in the background, reluctantly giving her time and space to enjoy her life.

When Dean returned to the manor, Cael disappeared entirely.

“Looking good,” she said playfully when she opened the door.

“I changed my outfit, like, five times,” he answered with a comical eye-roll. “You look great, too.”

“Thanks.”

Outside on the gravel drive was parked a shiny, metallic grey Audi A3 Cabriolet. Emmie balked at the sleek, sophisticated machine.

“Woah! Is that your car?”

“Yeah.” He shrugged.

“You sure you didn’t go out and rent a set of flashy wheels just to impress me?”

Dean clucked his tongue. “You caught me. Even borrowed my old man’s Sunday tie.”

“It’s funny—I always assumed you guys just drove around in those big white vans all the time.”

“Oh, we do. Totally. Stannisfield pays for the gas on those babies, so we’d be stupid not to. But we all have our own cars, too. They’re just parked at the hotel most of the time.”

He opened the passenger side door for her. Thanking him, Emmie slid into the low, scoop-back seat. Inside, the car was upholstered in butter-soft, charcoal grey leather, and the dash was chrome and black with neon blue gauges.

“So where are we going?” she asked as he climbed into the driver’s side and turned on the ignition. The engine purred to life with a seductive sigh.

“How does Aviemore sound? There’s this small pub I heard about. It’s called the Avie—”

“The Aviemore Arms,” she finished. “I’ve been. It’s a great little place.”

Dean tipped his head back and grinned ruefully. “You’ve been. Ah, and here I was hoping to take you someplace new, get you out of that dusty old manor house.”

“Even better—you’re taking me to one of my favourite places around.”

“We both know this is one of the only places around.”

Her lips quirked, eyes sparkling with humour. “The sentiment still stands.”

The driving, as well as the actual time spent
with
Dean rather than the time spent dreading it, lent a great deal to helping Emmie relax. Her earlier trepidation about his private hopes and expectations for the evening waned. Now that the actual date had arrived, he proved himself to be remarkably easy to be around. She had gotten a sense of it in the time the crew had been at Tullybrae, notably at The Grigg and again at the university when he was introducing her to his skeletal friends. On- on-one, in the close confines of his luxury vehicle, he was even more so. Gone was the cocky lady-killer persona that competed with Adam to flirt with her. That Dean was replaced with a man who was effortlessly charming, with a distinctly Texan flavour. He was witty, self-deprecating and a born conversationalist.

Being with him was natural. Fun. Emmie’s earlier burdens, brought on by the slightly oppressive atmosphere of Tullybrae and its ghostly inhabitants, and by her incomprehensible connection to Cael and his mystery, melted away.

“Good to see you again, lass,” said the handsome, salt-and-pepper-haired barman when they arrived and found a seat at the Aviemore Arms. “Pint of stout, is it?

“I’d love one,” she answered, somewhere between flirty and friendly.

“And what’ll yer young man here have?”

“Tenents. Thanks, bud.”

“Sure.” The barman winked at Emmie before leaving to fill their orders.

Dean raised an eyebrow at her. “You come here often?”

“No, just the once. He must have a good memory.”

“He’d have to be brain dead not to remember a looker like you.”

“Come on, now, Deano. Put the Alpha Male act away,” she chastised teasingly.

He didn’t miss a beat. “No can do. It’s a natural male instinct. I’ll be peeing on you to mark my territory next.” He drew an imaginary square around the perimeter of their table. “Just give me a half hour to get my first pint down.”

“Charming.”

The evening stretched on, as pleasant as it had promised to be at the start. At times, Dean had Emmie in stitches, and when she wasn’t laughing, she was engrossed in the stories he told. He painted a picture of his life in Texas, of the parents that were still there and the high school football friends who had all taken jobs in factories right after graduation. He told her about late-night forays to the old Four Boulders Bridge off Ridley’s ranch, and of the test of manhood he and his friends had all taken by jumping into the river below without a scrap of clothing on.

With considerable coaxing, Emmie relayed the details of her childhood in Corner Brook, Newfoundland without delving into any of the particulars. She described for him the smell of saltwater on a rainy morning, and of the sound of the cargo ships when they docked in St. John’s. He seemed especially interested in her explanation of the buildings in a seaside town, tall and narrow, clapboard siding painted bright blues, yellows and rust reds.

“I thought Newfoundlanders had accents,” he noted when she said as much as she wanted to.

“I can do one.”

“Yeah? Let’s hear.”

Emmie sat back in her chair, eyeing Dean speculatively as she thought of what she would say.

“She’s some lop on the pond, buddy what?” she said in a perfect Newfoundlander lilt.

He stared at her, incredulous. “What?”

“I said, ‘The water’s rough today, isn’t it?’”

“That’s crazy.” He shook his head, in awe of this side of Emmie he’d never seen before. “So why don’t you talk that way all the time? Were you born somewhere else, or have you learned how to hide your accent, like me?”

“The former,” she evaded.

“Don’t know why you don’t pull that out to charm the men-folk more often. I find the Texas drawl works wonders on the ladies.” He winked.

“I bet you do,” she answered dryly, and took a pull of her pint.

It was after midnight by the time the night life at the Aviemore Arms began to wind down. Emmie was surprised by how easily the time and conversation passed—as did three full pints of local stout. She rarely drank that much (her night of copious wine at the one roast beef dinner with Lamb notwithstanding), but was enjoying the slight blur it added to the edges of everything. Dean, who was driving, only had two pints of Tenents, and filled in the gaps with ginger beer and a sizeable selection of appetizers.

“You’re going to lose that girlish figure of yours one day if you’re not careful,” she teased as he shovelled a deep-fried curried spring roll into his mouth.

“Nah, I’m solid. This is what race horses eat just before the Belmont Stakes. Look it up, it’s a fact.”

He chomped goofily through another spring roll.

“I don’t know how you can say something so outrageous with a straight face like that.”

“It’s a gift. I’m blessed.”

When they both agreed they were ready to go home, Dean paid the bill and they left, with the barman’s invitation for Emmie—no mention of Dean—to come back soon.

“It’s good to see you smile again,” Dean noted as he drove them down the winding Highland roads back to Tullybrae.

Emmie watched the stark white beams of the Cabriolet’s high-powered headlights part the curtain of night in front of them.

“Lamb said the same thing this morning,” she answered eventually.

“Less stressed or something?”

“Something like that.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, okay? I don’t mean it as an insult, but I wouldn’t have thought curating was a particularly stressful job.”

She grinned sideways at him. “No insult taken. You’re right, it’s a pretty low-key job.”

“Something else going on, then?”

“Yeah.”

Dean gave her a long glance when she did not say any more—as long as he could afford while driving down a winding road in the dark.

“Whatever it was, I’m glad it’s done. You had us all really worried.”

“Yeah right. I’m sure Adam was practically pacing his hotel room.”

Dean raked his fingers through his hair. “Adam’s an ass most of the time. But he’s a good guy underneath all that. He really cares about people deep down.”

Emmie smiled to herself. “I know.”

They made the rest of the drive in good time. It was a little after one thirty in the morning when Dean pulled through the gates onto Tullybrae’s drive.

Immediately, a sense of extreme agitation prickled the surface of Emmie’s skin. She shivered visibly.

“You’re not cold, are you?” Dean asked.

“No. Just— No, I’m fine.” How could she finish that sentence any other way?

He raised an eyebrow, but didn’t comment.

The uncomfortable sensation Emmie felt was coming from Cael—he was not happy. But unlike her usual awareness of him, which translated itself into a localized sensation which allowed her to pinpoint his physical location in proximity to her own, the prickling was everywhere. It was all around her, thickening the air like a dense Highland mist. It was cloying. And Dean was blissfully unaware of it.

He pulled the car up to the front of the house and turned off the ignition. When she moved to open her door, he called, “Stay where you are. I’ve got it.” Hopping deftly out, he trotted around to the passenger side.

“Thank you,” she said, outwardly cheerful.

There was a short walk to the front door. Dean hung slightly behind, his hand hovering at the small of her back. It was a possessive gesture, subtle though it was. Another kind of trepidation, one which had nothing to do with Cael, began to sneak into her thoughts. Dean was strangely quiet. Nervous.

Please don’t let him be thinking what she thought he was thinking.

She nearly groaned out loud when her suspicions were confirmed. As she unlocked the door and turned the handle, he put a hand out to stop her.

“Em, wait.”

Then he hesitated. Then smiled nervously. Then raked his fingers through his hair again.

“Look, I know we said we’d just go out as friends and all—and I respect that. But I think you know by now that I like you.”

“Um… yeah,” she said slowly.

Despite her wariness, Dean pressed on. “I mean, what guy wouldn’t, just to look at you? Wow, that sounded bad—don’t get me wrong, it’s not just that you’re beautiful. You
are
beautiful, but I mean…” He laughed helplessly. “Jeez, I’m making a mess of this. What I mean to say is, you’re smart, down to earth, you know? Like, you really seem to have it together.”

“I—” The statement took her aback. The notion that she’d been falling apart had been at the centre of her personal crisis for several weeks now. To hear him say she “had it together” sounded odd to her ears. Unnatural. Her unease over what Dean was trying to tell her lessened slightly as she grappled with his assessment of her.

“Oh, Dean. No, I don’t. Not really.”

“I don’t believe that,” he insisted, his gaze turning searching. “Have you seen yourself lately? I mean, objectively? A curator at your age, independent and sure of yourself. You know exactly who you are and where you’re going. Like no one can faze you. I mean, yeah sure, you wear hoodies and yoga pants once in a while, and you have stress to deal with. But everyone does, right?”

Emmie stared at Dean, interested by the account of herself he was giving. With everything she’d learned over the past two days—about her mother, about herself, about Cael—she wasn’t sure of anything at all right now. Did other people see her the way Dean did, she wondered?

“Look,” he finished, “the thing is—I was wondering if there might be some point in the near future that we could be… you know… more than friends?”

There was such hope in his eyes that it broke her heart to have to refuse him.

Then again, she didn’t
have
to refuse him. Not if she didn’t want to. The little old woman had told her to go out with Dean. Well, Emmie had gone. And she’d had fun.

Unfortunately, while she was debating with herself about whether or not she would say no, her mouth had run ahead of her brain and was saying things she wasn’t sure she meant.

“Dean. Oh my gosh. I’m flattered, really. And you’re really cute. Believe me, I’m not oblivious to the fact that you’re a hottie. It’s just… I’m really not in the right headspace to think about dating just now.”