Christmas Spirit Read online

  Never leave you ...

  I promise ...

  Charlie gasped and curled her fingers in the comforter. A man’s voice had answered, a foreign lilt audible even through the grit of passion.

  She could still hear them, even if she could no longer understand them—there was only the faraway whisper of murmured words, the soft husk of breath over heated skin.

  Behind her closed eyes, the images unspooled like an old filmstrip—a bare foot, arched and flexing, the soft rustle of sheer curtains at the window, hands clasped together on the rumpled red velvet bedclothes. And there was a soundtrack beyond the whispering, too. What sounded like horses’ hooves on cobblestone, the distant cry of a gull, and a creaking groan that Charlie thought might be the wheels of a carriage.

  Never leave me ...

  You must promise me ...

  Her breath caught in her throat. A single tear spilled down one cheek as she struggled up on her elbows, opening her eyes. As quickly as it had come, the heat dissipated with an audible rush, leaving her shivering.

  And hearing that wrecked, broken voice in her head, murmuring, “Never leave me ...”

  Charlie didn’t answer when Sam knocked, and for a moment he panicked. He had his bag over his shoulder and was standing on her porch assuming he would be welcome, and suddenly he wondered what the hell he was doing. What if she didn’t want him here? What if she didn’t want him here after he told her he was only staying for another two days?

  What if, a voice in his head suggested, something had happened to her while he was out, and that was why she wasn’t answering the door?

  He was scrambling around the side of the house, finding it slow going in the drifts of snow, but he made it up the ice-thick back steps before he had a chance to think twice about it. The kitchen door was unlocked, which he would have to speak to her about later, and he dropped his bags inside just over the threshold, calling for her.

  “Charlie? Are you here? Charlie?”

  The house was quiet, the only noise the hum of the refrigerator and the rattle of the old windows in the winter wind. The afternoon sun glowed gold in the front parlor and on the honey-pine planks of the hallway floor.

  It was too quiet, damn it.

  “Charlie!” Sam shouted as he took the stairs two at a time. What if that angry thing had pushed her down? What if she had hit her head? What if she was unconscious?

  What if ... she was sitting at her desk, tapping furiously at her keyboard, the white snakes of iPod ear buds trailing over her shoulders.

  “Charlie.” He touched her shoulder, and she jumped a foot, one finger hitting the keyboard until a series of k’s skidded across the screen.

  “Sam!” She tugged the ear buds away and scrambled to her feet. Her face was flushed with what looked strangely like guilt. “You scared me to death.”

  “I knocked and I called, but you didn’t answer,” he said, cutting his glance sideways to read the computer screen.

  Her chemise drifted to the floor in a cloud of white muslin as he watched, dark eyes hungry. Always so hungry, and for her.

  She shivered under the weight of that gaze as it roamed over her bare skin. It was always so exciting to let him gaze at her before they touched, knowing that his hands, his mouth, would seek out every place his—

  He glanced up sharply. “Mind if I read it? Too late. I did. Couldn’t help it.”

  “What? No!” She stepped between him and the screen, blushing furiously now, and suddenly he understood the trace of guilt that tightened the lines of her mouth.

  He grinned at her as he curled his fingers around her arms. “Are you writing a dirty book, Charlotte Prescott?”

  She squeaked in response. Actually squeaked, eyes wide behind her glasses, which were slightly askew, and cheeks flaming with color now. “No! God, Sam, of course not! I’m ... I’m ...”

  He lifted a brow and smiled at her playfully. “Writing erotica?”

  She smacked at his chest, but it was half-hearted. “It’s not ... that. It’s ... I don’t know what it is.”

  He steered her out of the way and read over her shoulder. “His mouth would seek out every place his gaze had sought out, caressing her, mapping her body like an uncharted country, one he had conquered and would lay claim to time and again—”

  “All right!” She pressed her lips together, caught somewhere between fury and embarrassment. “It’s sexy, yes. But it’s a love story. I think.”

  Reaching to one side, he grabbed for her rolling desk chair and sat down, pulling her onto his lap. For a moment, she refused to give, stiff and unyielding, but when he smoothed one hand up her back, she softened. “What do you mean, you think?” he asked, mouthing along her shoulder, making the cotton damp. “You don’t know what you’re writing?”

  “Sort of.” She let her head roll to one side, bumping gently against his, as he slid a hand under her shirt, fingers light on the supple skin over her rib cage. “It just started ... coming to me. Oh.”

  He smiled against her collarbone as he smoothed the heel of his hand in lazy circles around one breast. The silk felt good against his skin. “Coming to you? What do you mean?” He punctuated the question with a biting kiss to her throat, pulling blood to the surface, knowing he would be able to see the pale purple bloom later.

  “The characters just ... came to me.” Her voice was unsteady now that his free hand had slipped between her thighs. He used his thumb against the seam, searching out her clit. “Today ...” She shuddered, pliant and nearly breathless now. “When I ... went into the spare room.”

  This time she gasped instead of squeaked, which wasn’t surprising since he shoved her out of his lap to stand up, mouth working in disbelief before he finally got the words out.

  “You did what?”

  “Butch came with me,” she began, but he interrupted her.

  “Oh right. The hero cat. I don’t think he’s going to protect you.”

  Charlie blew out a sigh that ruffled her hair a little. “He was trying to walk on the keyboard—”

  Sam held up his hands. “Whoa. Next you’ll be telling me Butch wrote this. He channels Barbara Cartland, right?”

  “Shut up,” she said exasperatedly. “Okay, if you won’t listen, here goes.” She looked into the monitor and poised her fingers above the keyboard, then started typing as if she was possessed.

  “Do it,” she whispered, letting her lips brush against Daniel’s cheek. “No one can hear.”

  “You play with fire, my girl.” He shook his head, his dark shaggy mane tickling her nose. “One day we’ll both be burned.”

  “I don’t care,” she groaned, stubborn and aching, pressed against him in the dark shed, the silver moonlight thin and cold through the window. With a shaking hand she reached for the buttons of her bodice, slipped them loose one by one as he kissed the words out of her mouth, bit down on the plump swell of her bottom lip.

  He wouldn’t refuse her, she thought through the haze of need, trembling as it heated her. He could never refuse her.

  Pulling apart her bodice, the chemise underneath it, she offered her breasts to him, pale and smooth in the dark. With one hand behind his head, fingers scrabbling in his hair, she tugged him down, and he went willingly, mouth fastening around one erect peak.

  She groaned again, shameless, as his tongue pressed the rigid underside of her nipple against the roof of his mouth so he could draw hard, suckling. The sensation arrowed into her belly, a streak of fire, and she clutched his head harder as he sucked, pulling on her breast so deeply she felt her knees wobble.

  “Daniel,” she breathed, and hitched up her skirts with her free hand.

  He didn’t hesitate, didn’t play at protest, simply slid his hand between her thighs, petting her once before his fingers parted her. When the first one worked inside her, firm and hot, she shuddered. When his thumb found the swollen knot of flesh above it, tracing around it in a lazy circle, she cried out only to find his free hand clamped over her mout
h.

  “Hush now, love,” he whispered into the smooth skin between her breasts. “Hush now and let me.”

  She nodded, a sob of helpless need stifled behind his palm, and let him stroke her as she shook and quivered there in the musty darkness, the shed wall rough at her back, snagging at the fabric of her dress.

  She didn’t care, she thought just before she broke. She didn’t care about anything but him, and this.

  Sam looked at her with wonder. “That was fast,” he said.

  “Like I said, it just comes to me. I don’t know how.” Charlie gave him a worried look and then turned away from her monitor screen.

  Chapter Twelve

  A stiff drink, Lillian decided as she walked home hours after lunch with Iris. Hours which had been spent in the headache-inducing heat of the historical society library as Iris led her through the Prescott family tree.

  Gloria scuffed through the drifting snow on the cleared sidewalk, finding a dried leaf that was the same gingery russet as her coat. She snuffled and play-growled as she pranced, stopping every now and then to pounce.

  “If you’re seeing ghosts, too,” Lillian muttered, “we’re all doomed. Come on, you.”

  Gloria followed as she turned up the walk to Charlie’s house. The good news was that Iris had been a veritable fount of information about Charlie’s family; the bad news was that Lillian had been forced to endure her friend’s gentle lectures and still had no idea what to make of the family tree and pages of anecdotes and historical details she had copied onto a miscellaneous assortment of scrap paper.

  The best news, she thought as she rapped at the solid black door, would be if she could convince Charlie to open a bottle of wine.

  Charlie didn’t answer her knock, but when Lillian pulled away to glance at the window, she heard voices. Not ghostly voices, but very human ones—and both of them raised in the unmistakable volume of an argument.

  “Oh, Charlie,” she murmured under her breath. And knocked harder. Gloria helped out with a demanding yap.

  The door flung open a moment later, and she blinked when found herself faced with a very tall, very angry Sam. He was answering Charlie’s door now?

  Before she could remark on just how ballsy she thought that was, Sam growled, “Lillian. Good. Maybe you can talk some sense into her.”

  “I heard that!” Charlie called from the other room, although honestly the decibel level of her voice was closer to shouting than calling. Lillian smiled tightly at Sam and pushed past him, Gloria following at her heels.

  “What on earth is going on here?” she demanded when she found Charlie in the front parlor, pacing in front of the fireplace. “You two have only known each other for a few days, and if you’re bickering like this already, I have to tell you, it’s not exactly a promising sign.”

  “We’re not bickering,” Charlie protested, and Sam snorted. His blue eyes were blazing.

  “Oh no? What do you call it?”

  “I call it you being absurd and overprotective and ... and stupid, and me being perfectly able to take care of myself, thank you very much,” Charlie snapped.

  “Stupid?” Sam retorted, crossing his arms over his chest. He was as flushed as Charlie was, and Lillian couldn’t help watching as the muscles in his upper arms rippled with tension. “I’m being stupid when you’re the one who decided to go hang out with the spooks while you were all alone in the house?”

  Lillian glanced at Charlie, startled. She still wasn’t convinced that the ghost or spirit or whatever the hell it was would truly hurt anyone, but that was the kind of thing no one should test on her own.

  “Nothing happened,” Charlie gritted out. She’d scooped her hair up on the back of her head in a loose knot and shoved a pencil through it as an anchor. It was her I-mean-business style, and Lillian hadn’t seen it since the day Charlie had decided to clean out the house’s enormous, dusty attic. “Nothing but the same heat I’ve felt before, except this time I heard them talking. I saw them.”

  “Them?” Lillian said, intrigued. She sat down on the sofa and spread her notes over the coffee table.

  “A man and a woman.” Sam didn’t sound happy about this new wrinkle, either. “She saw, or she visualized, whatever you want to call it, a man and a woman, apparently in the throes of passion. It was all very inspiring, I understand.”

  Lillian glanced up at that, and bit back a smile when Charlie scowled. “I don’t know what you’re so upset about,” she said, and turned around to press a hand against the window glass, needing the feel of something bracingly cold. “But you’re making me crazy. And not in a good way.”

  Lillian turned a surprised laugh into a cough that she was pretty sure didn’t fool either of them, and waved at him when Sam opened his mouth to protest. “Look, I’m not exactly sure what you two are fighting about, but I have some news. Any chance you two could call a cease-fire long enough for me to tell you about it?”

  She glanced between the two of them when Charlie turned around again, and waited until they had both nodded before adding, “Good. Now. Is there any chance we could open some wine while I do?” She saw Charlie glance toward the spice rack in the kitchen and quickly said, “No, for God’s sake, please don’t mull it. I’m going to need all the help I can get.”

  “Where did you find all this?” Charlie asked Lillian a half hour later. They had all trooped in the kitchen, where Lillian had spread her notes over the wide expanse of the kitchen table and Sam had unearthed a bottle of pinot grigio Charlie was trying to pretend he hadn’t turned up his nose at.

  “I have friends in low places,” Lillian told her with a waggle of her eyebrows. She took another long swallow of her wine and sighed in appreciation. “At the historical society, in fact. Iris Munson. I’ve known her forever, but the woman gives me a hell of a headache. Or maybe it’s the heat in the place.”

  Charlie laughed ruefully. Lillian never failed to fascinate her, but she was still surprised that her new friend had taken such a fervent interest in whatever paranormal thing had taken up residence in the Prescott house. It would be one thing if Lillian had ever seemed like the type to find the supernatural believable, but the woman Charlie had gotten to know over the past two months was the last person she ever would have imagined could get hooked on ghost stories.

  “What is all this?” Sam asked, sifting through the pieces of notepaper, each one covered with Lillian’s spidery scrawl.

  Charlie straightened her spine, metaphorically at least, and wondered if moving her chair away from his would be ridiculous. It would, of course it would, because this wasn’t seventh grade, but she couldn’t concentrate. Not with him so close, and smelling so good, and the memory of the heat of his body so fresh. She’d been this close to stripping off her clothes and letting him do her right there on her desk when he’d decided freaking out over her solitary trip to the spare room was more important than kissing her.

  The big jerk.

  “It’s the Prescott family tree, among other things,” Lillian said, pawing through the scraps herself, clearly looking for something. “I think it’s probably pretty clear that this ghost, or ghosts, has to be a Prescott, right? Well, to begin with, you are from an interesting clan. I bet the most interesting genes got concentrated in you, Charlie.”

  Charlie didn’t quite like the feeling of suddenly being under an electron microscope with naked DNA, even though she knew her neighbor didn’t mean it that way. But she leaned forward to look at the pieces of paper Lillian had finally put in some kind of order.

  “Here we go,” Lillian announced. “Cyrus Prescott was married to Louisa Weston in the 1870s—it says the exact date right there on that photocopy of the church record but I can’t read it without my glasses.” Charlie peered at it without much interest. “Their children were Temperance, Constance, and one son, Merit. According to Constance’s diary, which was found in the society’s papers only recently, Temperance was, quote unquote, a fallen woman. Her lover’s name was only indicated
by the initial D wherever it appeared in the diary. But you probably know all that, don’t you, Charlie? Do you know who the man was?”

  Charlie’s lips parted but she replied slowly, “No. I don’t. How interesting.” She’d heard of Constance, though the existence of a diary was news to her, and had heard of Merit, and had known vaguely that there was a third sibling. But never knew her name.

  Temperance.

  Feeling as shocked as if she’d been struck by lightning, she wasn’t ready to reveal that in her automatic writing, her ancestress and her heroine were one and the same. Had Sam even seen the name? She didn’t think so.

  “Cyrus sounds like a laugh a minute,” Sam said darkly from the other end of the table.

  Charlie and Lillian ignored him as Lillian continued. “Merit married Abigail Avery, and their children were Patience, born in 1910, and your grandfather, James, born in 1912.”

  “I barely remember him,” Charlie said softly, thinking of the fierce old man with the beaky nose and the faint scent of pipe tobacco clinging to his clothes.

  “Patience married William Holbrook in 1935,” Lillian went on, “but they never had children. William was building ships for the war effort by the time they were married a year or two, and he was later killed in a factory mishap.”

  Charlie made an involuntary noise, and tried not to flinch when Sam reached over and coasted a hand along her spine. More than one of the Prescotts had died too young, and for the first time she wondered why and if it had anything to do with whatever spirit lurked in this house. She shuddered involuntarily.

  “Your grandfather James married Josephine Bale, and their children were Margaret, Michael, and May,” Lillian concluded. “And you know most of the rest.” She set down the notes and picked up her wine, brooding over the glass for a minute, her brows knitted in thought.