Christmas Spirit Read online

  It was Lillian’s turn to blink. “Where on earth did that come from?”

  The waitress passed by with a tray for the table next to them, and Iris leaned in to lower her voice. “Oh, Lillian, don’t be dense. It must be a little difficult for you to have her living there, right next door. I’ve met her, you know. She looks awfully like her father.”

  Fists. She was making fists under the table, but as long as she didn’t use them, it was all right, Lillian assured herself. “Iris, we’ve talked about this a million times ...”

  “I know it,” Iris retorted, and beamed up at the waitress, who was taking her chowder from a tray. “But that was before Michael’s daughter moved in next door and you got chummy with her, so I think the topic deserves a bit of attention, don’t you?”

  Lillian gritted her teeth until the waitress had set her plate and coffee down, and then glared across the table at her friend. “All that is over and done with, I’ve told you that for years. The man is dead, for goodness’ sake.”

  Iris opened her mouth, but Lillian glared harder. “As for Charlie, she’s a lovely young woman I would be happy to know no matter who she was,” Lillian went on, distressed to realize she was actually wagging her finger. “So ... there.”

  She scowled when Iris lifted an eyebrow, amusement plain on her face. “Fine. Let’s drop the subject then. Instead why don’t you tell me, honestly now, why you wanted to have lunch. Usually I have to put my foot down and demand it, and you know it as well as I do. I’m not as absentminded as I look, dear.” She picked up her iced tea glass and shook it lightly, the ice cubes tinkling musically. “So what is it you need?”

  One day, Lillian decided, she was going to make a note to remind herself that Iris was not, in fact, as ditzy as she liked to appear. She let her shoulders sag, knowing she was in for some smug crowing from her friend when she said, “I need you to tell me everything you know about the Prescott family.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “Stop it, Butch,” Charlie warned the cat sometime around two o’clock. He’d jumped on the desk for the third time, and was attempting to curl up on the computer keyboard, which was simply weird as well as annoying. Of course, she couldn’t really blame him for assuming the space was up for grabs—she hadn’t written a word since she sat down. And it was one of the warmer spots in the house. The old glass in the windowpanes shook, buffeted by the wind, which had begun to blow again, picking up the drifted snow in little swirls.

  This was ridiculous. She stared into her mug of cold coffee before standing up to roll her neck and shoulders. Maybe a change of scene would do the trick, get her brain moving again. Caffeine certainly hadn’t worked.

  She carried the mug downstairs, Butch padding behind her on the smooth wooden treads. Maybe this was what always happened when you plunged into a steamy fling, she thought as she dumped out the contents of her mug and rinsed it in the sink. She hadn’t been able to think straight for, what, days now, and she certainly hadn’t slept very well.

  Not that the kind of not-sleeping she’d been doing was anything to complain about. She bit her lip as she stood leaning against the counter, the rushing water from the faucet forgotten as she tried to suppress a grin.

  She could spend a few more days—heck, a few weeks—mapping Sam’s body. Straight through Christmas and into New Year’s Eve, which was, after all, the ultimate couples holiday. New Year’s Day ... that they could devote to champagne detox with aspirin and tea and long naps in each other’s arms.

  Yeah. He could rock her for days.

  Exploration was a pleasure she’d never considered before—a man’s body was interesting in its own way, and the ones she’d known had been attractive, but Sam was different somehow.

  Sam let her explore, for one thing. Sam didn’t need to rush, wasn’t focused on the moment he could be inside her, not that he objected to it, of course. He was perfectly willing to lie back and let her touch him, press her mouth to him there and there and then there, tasting the subtle differences between hipbone and shoulder, testing the weight of bicep as compared to thigh. She’d already fallen in love with the shallow dent at the base of his spine, the coffee-colored birthmark that rode high on one shoulder, the wrist bones that seemed just knobby enough for hands as strong as his were.

  It was a bit like unlocking him, piece by piece, she thought, and jumped when the cat landed on the counter beside her to swat at the water still gushing from the tap. She shut it off and set Butch down on the floor before she wandered out of the kitchen and came to a stop before the window in the front parlor.

  Unlocking Sam’s heart might take a little longer than his body, she realized as she stared out at the December day. She was getting an idea by now of how generous Sam could be, how tender as well as how interestingly fierce, how intelligent he was and how irreverently funny, but she didn’t know what any of it meant.

  At the moment, she wasn’t even sure she wanted to find out. She just wanted him to come back later this afternoon, so she could kiss him, and stroke her hands down his heaving rib cage as he thrust into her.

  She blushed just thinking about it. Desire was a powerful thing when it hit this hard, and she was still a little surprised that the sheer intensity of it hadn’t knocked her flat.

  Butch wound around her ankles, tail flicking lazily, and she roused herself out of her thoughts. That was part of the heat she’d felt up in the spare room—intensity. Passion so overwhelming and powerful it had blazed right through the years, even when—she was guessing but she sensed that it was a good guess—life itself had gone.

  But whatever had pushed Sam away from her was no less intense. Somehow the two things had to be related—as absurd as the existence of one spirit seemed, two random, completely different ghosts were even farther out of the realm of possibility.

  Marshaling her determination, she grabbed Butch and headed upstairs. If she couldn’t write, she was going to sit up in that room and wait for the ghost to come back.

  Sam flipped his cell phone shut and threw it on the bed beside him before he flopped on his back. Bridget Hartigan of Narragansett, Rhode Island, was expecting him two days from now, to discuss the weeping woman who had been haunting the attic of the Seaswept Inn for the past hundred years.

  He didn’t have a choice about going. Kevin had left no less than eight separate voice mails and six e-mails in the last two days, demanding Sam get in touch and asking for updates about the article.

  “Dude, you’re new here, you know,” he’d said in the last voice mail, sent just this morning. His tone had been silky, sure of himself, and Sam had tightened his jaw so hard while listening it still ached vaguely. “Maybe you were hot stuff wherever you worked before, but you’re working for Scoop now. For me. Not happy with that? Things can change, you know. Fast.”

  Well, Sam would have been happy if Scoop printed its last issue and then went up in flames, metaphorically speaking. It was a gossip rag, nothing more than recycled celeb sightings and teen stars’ favorite ice cream flavors, with the occasional sensational human interest piece readers apparently couldn’t get enough of. Sam hated it the way he hated pistachios and unexplained traffic jams and the Yankees’ new manager.

  But he’d made his bed, as the saying went, and now he had to lie in it. Plus the economy was not going to come out of its nosedive any time soon. He chided himself for mixing metaphors. At least, he thought, sitting up and staring at his meticulously kept hotel room, he got to lie down in said metaphorical bed with Charlie now and then.

  For the time being, anyway.

  First he had to tell her he was heading to Rhode Island, and then up to Gloucester, where the story went that an eerie voice had been heard in the basement, and strange liquid had been oozing from between the ancient bricks.

  If he had to include the word “ectoplasm” in this article, he was going to buy the biggest bottle of scotch he could find and dive in headfirst.

  He rolled off the bed and stood up, easing the kink
s out of his shoulders. The desk in the room was a tiny, delicate thing made almost entirely of gingerbread trim as far as he could tell, but working on the bed wasn’t exactly a better option. Working at Charlie’s kitchen table would have been more sensible, and much more comfortable, and for a minute he wondered what on earth had convinced him to come back to the inn this morning instead.

  Then he remembered the way Charlie had looked in her robe, still sleep-soft around the edges, hair tousled and cheeks pink, and he grunted. Yeah, working at Charlie’s would have meant taking her back to bed, or possibly just taking her right there in the kitchen.

  It wasn’t an entirely comfortable thought, either. He’d been with enough women to know what infatuation was, what good old lust was, the way a hot hookup flamed to life and then fizzled out, and what he and Charlie had between them was somehow nothing like any of that. It was explosive, it was demanding, it was like a goddamn force of nature.

  He didn’t get it, that was the thing. And what was worse was the high probability that he was going to hurt her without wanting to, just because this couldn’t last. Good things didn’t. And he was going to cut out right around or just after Christmas, which was generally not the most wonderful time of the year, no matter how that damn song went.

  That had been clear enough this morning.

  Charlie Prescott was smart and big-hearted and brave and sweet and adorable but, despite all that, he wasn’t the right guy for her. He wasn’t sure who would be, really, and automatically hated all the other potential candidates for this lifetime and the next. Whatever. None of the women he dated— okay, sometimes simply slept with—had wanted the things he knew Charlie would want eventually. Marriage, kids, asking him to take out the garbage while she finished loading the dishwasher, anniversary dinners with house wine, and sitting together at school plays and PTA meetings.

  He shook his head as he leaned over to power off his laptop. It wasn’t a bad dream, he guessed, if you were into that, but no one was going to convince him it ever worked the way it was supposed to. People said a lot of things—“I love you” and “It’s forever” and “Trust me”—but it didn’t make them true. It didn’t make them mean any more than the air it took to speak them aloud.

  No, Sam liked facts. And right now the only fact that interested him was how much he wanted Charlie. Wanted her, not loved her. He didn’t even lie to himself.

  And as long as she wanted him, he was going to be there. There, he thought suddenly, glancing out the window, in her house, if she would have him.

  He tossed his dirty clothes into one side of his suitcase, patting down the clean, folded stuff to make it all fit, and grabbed up his cell phone and laptop. Parka hood up and half-blinded by the fur trim, he slid his key across the counter to the bored young guy downstairs at the front desk.

  “I’m checking out,” he said without thinking twice. “I’d like to settle my bill.”

  Butch had balked when Charlie had tried to carry him into the spare room, which she took as a hopeful sign despite the claws digging into her sweater as he tried to leap from her arms. If he was spooked, then it meant he’d sensed something, or at least that’s what everyone said about pets and the supernatural. So she’d soothed him with a few long, gentle strokes and the shushing noise that always made him purr, and he’d finally settled against her shoulder, even though his ears were pressed flat to his head.

  He’d curled up against her when she climbed onto the bed, leaning back against the pillows with a deep breath. Nothing felt out of the ordinary to her yet, but then she’d never gotten any kind of warning. So she settled back, carefully cataloging everything she knew about this room.

  She was pretty sure it had been her dad’s room when he was growing up, long before it had been painted lavender. She’d noticed the name Michael Prescott carved in an inconspicuous place inside the closet, the way a kid staked a claim. He and her mom had stayed in here when they came to visit, with Charlie in the room she had turned into her office—her aunt May’s girlhood room. The dear and departed, she thought. Not that the Prescotts had ever been all that warm or demonstrative as a rule. Of course, that could change, she thought with a wry smile, wishing Sam were here to distract her. She’d love to be the first passionate Prescott. And have a few little Prescotts to raise in happiness.

  As if the overly long holiday season wasn’t potentially depressing enough without thinking about being the last of the family line, she scolded herself. Maybe, just maybe, given the supernatural happenings, there was a curse on the house and she was next in line for something awful. Wait five more minutes and a Christmas zombie might pop out of the walls, shiny gift paper and curling ribbons in its cold, cold hands.

  She laughed to herself, knowing she’d conjured that up out of her own ineptitude at wrapping presents. Come to think of it, she hadn’t bought any. But there was, what, two or three weeks to go? She wriggled when Butch kneaded at her arm, shifting to scratch behind his ears. No need to think about things like that, not here, not now. She focused, concentrating on the room, and on what she could remember of it from growing up.

  It had been a guest room almost as far back as she could recall. Robbie and Susannah, her cousins, had been given two rooms on the third floor once they were in middle school, and Charlie only vaguely recalled playing in here once when the room was still Susannah’s, bright pink and frilled with white eyelet and lace. That visit, she was pretty sure her parents had been in Aunt Margaret’s girlhood room, with Charlie in a sleeping bag right here on the floor.

  Her Prescott cousins were still very much alive, but where they were, she had no idea. Scattered across the country. A brief look on Facebook hadn’t turned up a thumbnail that looked like either one and that was about as far as she’d gotten.

  She sighed, wishing she had more family going on than that. So what was with this room anyway? She had slept in it, Susannah and her father had grown up here, in different generations, and maybe one of them had felt what she had at some point. But no one had ever breathed a word of it if that were true.

  Typical New Englanders. Afraid to let the neighbors know anything the least untoward was taking place in their proper family.

  Why? Their sins had been small ones, as far as she knew. By current standards of human behavior, admittedly low, not sins at all.

  Charlie had once caught Aunt May looking at the sleek contemporary furniture in the Sunday ads more than once, but would she buy any? Of course not. Such pieces weren’t right for an old Victorian, even if she loathed every fussy little chair and scrap of chintz in the house. Aunt Margaret had always insisted on dress-up clothes and honest-to-God hats on Easter Sunday, because that’s what was done. Questions about the more interesting things in life, like love and sex and what to do when a boy kissed you were met with polite non-answers from them and her parents.

  And then there had been too many funerals for the usual routine reasons and no one left to even ask. She thought again that she ought to make more of an effort to find her cousins.

  Somehow, timid as she’d been in her life, she knew she wasn’t very much like the rest of the Prescotts. Was she being visited, if that was the term, for that reason? She shook her head to clear it, wondering if she was more receptive to freaky phenomena.

  She was certainly good at looking for trouble. Here she was, all alone, awaiting the arrival of a ghost that seemed to be made of pure emotion ... and physical sensation ... with no idea who or what it was ...

  She gasped when the first wave of heat hit her, a blast as potent as the icy air that had blown into the room the other night. She struggled to breathe through it, suffocating under the hot, thick pressure of it. It had never come this quickly before—it usually oozed in gradually so she would find herself slightly warm before realizing that the heat was so solid she could practically smack it with her hand.

  But she couldn’t panic, even though Butch had already begun, hissing and spitting as he slunk off the bed and streaked out of the
room.

  “Thanks, kitty,” she muttered under her breath, her lips dry already in the blistering heat. “I’m getting a dog tomorrow. Serves you right.”

  She just needed to relax. That was all. If she simply tried to experience this, maybe she could sense something. Maybe she would be able to see or feel who was behind that formless sensuality that engulfed her.

  Wiping a bead of sweat from her forehead, she closed her eyes, and tried to focus on breathing through the humid press of heat in her lungs. In and out, she breathed as carefully and slowly as she could, listening, waiting, wondering if she was trying too hard.

  Wondering, too, if she was a little crazy after all.

  Stop it, she admonished herself silently, blowing out another breath and registering the sheen of moisture on her cheeks and forehead. It was so hot, so stuffily close in the room already, she had to fight the urge to crawl off the bed and get away. That was what she had always done before, and she was never going to figure this out if she ran.

  She took another deep breath, shifting on the comforter, and then froze.

  Something, someone, was whispering. Just like in the kitchen the other day, a faint, papery shush too low to be more than a suggestion of sound.

  The noise shivered over her, setting the fine hairs on her arms and the back of her neck on end. It was almost a vibration, and it was so intense she nearly wriggled, as if to get away from it. But instead she froze again, because the whisper was closer now.

  Never leave you ...

  Never ...

  She shuddered at the plaintive voice. It was a woman, a woman caught somewhere between pain and pleasure, and when she squeezed her eyes shut she could see her.

  A bare shoulder, glossy hair spilling over it as she moved ... and then she was gone, and in her place was a pair of boots, falling into each other like drunken soldiers on the flowered carpet, their brown leather worn and scuffed, comfortably used.