Christmas Spirit Read online

  “I don’t—” Sam began.

  “The only ancestor who could be the ghost is Temperance. And if she had a lover, well, there’s the second ghost,” Charlie rushed out, not meeting Lillian’s sharp gaze or explaining her reasoning. “So that’s the family story no one would ever finish for me. Anything in the town records on what happened to her?”

  The wind shook the window over the sink, the glass rattling with a brittle shiver. “No. Maybe that’s what we need to figure out,” Lillian said softly.

  “I think we need to figure out more than that,” Charlie said.

  She stood up, arms wrapped around herself, for comfort as well as warmth. The sun was already going down, and she went to the side window. It was low over the water, glowing with gold fire.

  “Like what?” Sam asked.

  Charlie was lost in thought, feeling suddenly cold but from the inside out. If she and Sam were no more than channels for those long-ago lovers ... then what had happened between them wasn’t real and meant essentially nothing.

  And if the ghosts were trying to send her a message, she didn’t want to hear it.

  “This may sound strange, but right now I wish that the past and the present were completely separate. And that they stay that way.”

  “Oh, honey, life isn’t like that,” Lillian said in a soft rush of worried words.

  She turned around to face the others. Sam’s face was set hard, the first shadow of stubble lining his jaw, his hair tousled where he’d run his hands through it restlessly. Lillian was staring into her wineglass, her eyes cast down.

  “The past and the present—oh, they always connect somehow. But—” She looked up and around anxiously at the two of them. “We all seem to agree that supernatural beings have appeared, right?”

  “Yes,” Sam said bluntly.

  Charlie nodded, hating, absolutely hating that her dreams of love actually belonged to someone else. Spectral entities who needed bodies seemed to be the easiest explanation. Or were they omens of love gone wrong that she was supposed to heed? She’d read most of Dickens, knew A Christmas Carol just about by heart, even if she hadn’t been able to remember the name of the scariest ghost in it because Sam had been next to her at the time.

  “Okay. My theory is that these spirits seem to care a lot about you,” Lillian said. “Or maybe a better way of putting it is that they need you. Family ties are the strongest,” she chirped. “Especially around the holidays.”

  “So I’ve heard,” Charlie said dryly. “But none of the ghosts have identified themselves as Prescotts per se.”

  “Have you ever seen their faces?” Lillian asked.

  “Ah—no.” Charlie didn’t want to describe what she had seen and felt. Lillian seemed to know the gist of it.

  “I was wondering if there were old tintypes of them in the town archives,” Lillian mused. “I suppose I could ask Iris.”

  “Sure. Why not?” Charlie strove to keep her tone friendly, but the other woman’s interest unnerved her for some reason. By this point, Charlie wanted only to believe that the ghost or ghosts were nothing more than reflections of her tendency to daydream.

  That ... and a stealthy loneliness that had crept up on her because it was December and Christmas was coming. It wasn’t her favorite holiday and it never had been, but she’d always gotten through it somehow. Friends helped. So did keeping it simple.

  And then along came Sam Landry, thanks to Franny. He was smart. Protective. Strong. Sexy. A keeper, most definitely. But he didn’t seem to want to be kept. Of course, getting himself bashed by her resident ghosts wasn’t a plus.

  “Then I’m going to look for images,” Lillian said decisively. “I am very curious about Temperance. She sounds very independent. A rare quality for her time.”

  Charlie shrugged. “Maybe it came down to me. I like being by myself.”

  She swallowed hard, tears prickling behind her eyes even as Sam stood up, striding across the room toward her. “But I guess ghosts get a little lonely too,” she added. “So maybe my arrival woke them all up in time for Christmas.”

  Lillian looked completely dismayed. “I’m so sorry, Charlie. But we don’t know what brought them back or what will happen.” She hesitated. “Are you sure you want to stay here?”

  She gave Sam a pleading look that Charlie didn’t see.

  “I mean it, I want you to pack a bag right now,” Sam said, and slammed his hand down on the counter.

  Lillian was gone, and Gloria with her. An hour of unfounded speculation on every leaf and twig of the Prescott family tree had taken them back to where they’d begun—with no more information than what Lillian had scribbled down that afternoon—and they were all tired and edgy. Charlie looked absolutely wrecked, and the only thing Sam wanted was to get her out of this house and into a nice warm bed somewhere.

  Which was turning out to be a lot more difficult than he’d imagined, even if she had more or less acknowledged that their paranormal visitors had something to do with her family.

  “Will you please knock off the caveman routine?” Charlie said now, edging away from him and pouring herself another glass of wine. “You can be Tarzan if you want to, but don’t expect me to be Jane.”

  “I am not being a caveman,” Sam snapped, and took Charlie’s arm. “I don’t want you to get hurt. And when this argument started, you expressed some concern for me on that score. Remember?”

  Charlie wriggled, trying to disentangle herself, but Sam held tight. She wasn’t walking away from this conversation, not now.

  “Nothing’s ever happened to me,” she said finally, and set down her wineglass to place her hands on his chest. They looked too small to him, even though he knew how strong they were when she was clutching at him, holding on as he pumped inside her. “You know that. I was lying in that room today and nothing attacked me. Nothing hurt me. I got a paranormal peep show, that’s all.”

  “Yeah, well, you never knew there was a pushy ghost who liked to knock your boyfriends over, either,” Sam argued.

  “Singular.” She gave him a thin smile. “Boyfriend. There’s only you. And I’m not sure you qualify. You have to stick around for that.”

  “I’m trying to.” His head was starting to pound, part wine and part aggravation. “This is a whole lot more than I bargained for.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have knocked on my door,” she said airily.

  “Well, I did. And here we are.”

  She gave him a fierce look. “Sum it up for me, Sam. Where are we exactly?”

  “At the beginning of ”—he hesitated—“in the throes of—hell, I don’t know what to call it. And I suspect you don’t, either.”

  “I’m not even sure my mind is my own at this point. All that red velvet and writhing around and mysterious stories that write themselves—”

  “I saw your fingers move on that keyboard.”

  “You’re my witness, hard-headed though you are.” She blew out a sigh. “Next you’ll become a devotee of rapping and I don’t mean the music. Séance, anyone?”

  He looked a little uncomfortable. “Well, that you started writing hot-n-sexy romance for no reason at all is a little unusual, don’t you think?”

  She only shrugged. “There’s a market for it. Maybe I can sell it to a New York publisher. Saying that ghosts inspired me might interest one or two.”

  “I don’t think so. They’ve heard it all. If there’s anyone more cynical than an editor, I can’t think who. Charlie, why won’t you listen?”

  He wasn’t just exasperated, he was afraid, plain and simple. The idea of Charlie all alone here, recklessly encouraging the damn thing by hanging out in that room while he was away ...

  “Sam, come on.” Charlie took advantage of his distraction to push away from him. “I’m not going to leave my own house. I have to deal with this. And it’s ... well, it’s sweet that you’re so concerned about me, but, well ...”

  She trailed off, face pinched closed, not even looking at him.
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  “I won’t be around forever,” he finished for her, and closed the distance between them again. “You’re right.”

  His voice was harder than he’d meant it to be, harsher, too, the words sounding raw. She flinched when he grabbed her up again, craning his head down to look her in the eyes, forcing her to face him.

  “In fact, I have to be out of here in two days,” he said, and watched as surprise and disappointment and something much more brutal flickered through her eyes. “I have to write this goddamn article if I want to keep my job and if you haven’t noticed, everyone’s on the verge of being canned. I don’t have a choice on that, but I want you to come with me. I want you with me, Charlie.”

  Too many unspoken things hung between them, and the air was charged with it, snapping fire in the silence.

  But Charlie didn’t back down, didn’t soften beneath his hands, and he couldn’t say he was really surprised. Charlie was made of much sterner stuff than she appeared to be, and it was one of the things he was beginning to love about her.

  He flinched away from the thought at the same time she wrestled away from him again, and he didn’t have time to examine it when she stalked to the other side of the room.

  “And then what, Sam?” she said. She was trembling and pale, and he gritted his teeth, tightened his hands at his sides instead of going to her.

  “We fell into bed like ... well, I don’t know what,” she said, a little wildly. Her hair had come loose sometime in the last hour, and it fell around her face as she spoke. “I’ve never done anything like this before, I’ve never felt anything like this before. But you don’t even live here. I don’t even know what this is between us, or where it’s going.”

  And that’s when it struck Sam.

  He’d felt that heat, too, the first night, and he wouldn’t chalk it up entirely to ghosts. No way. That was them.

  He’d wanted to kiss her, touch her, had breathed in all that sexual heat until he was on fire with it.

  And now he couldn’t keep his hands off her. Couldn’t stop thinking about her. Was feeling like every other foolish, lovesick, overprotective man in history, when he hadn’t had more than a meaningless weekend fling with a woman in years, because that was how he liked it.

  Charlie had sagged into the chair Lillian had abandoned, and cradled her head in her hands. She looked exhausted, confused, and Sam didn’t blame her. This thing between them had hit out of the blue, and it had happened right here in this house, where Charlie had come looking for peace and quiet, and had instead gotten ghosts and a horny reporter who kept pawing at her, not that she was complaining as far as he could tell.

  This house, he thought absently. Where Charlie had gotten mysterious flashes of two passionate lovers, creating enough heat between them to melt a winter’s worth of New England snow and ice.

  She probably assumed that he thought she was crazy. Not even remotely. But he knew she’d bite his head off if he said so.

  Without warning, his skin crawled. What if this wasn’t even about them? What if this wasn’t just an unexpected infatuation for him, and an uncharacteristic fling for her?

  What if it was the ghosts, using them, energized by them, throwing them together?

  He didn’t know if that was possible, if it made any kind of sense, but he did know he needed to find out, for Charlie’s sake as well as his own. Before one of them got hurt in ways that couldn’t be patched up with an ice pack or a band-aid.

  He kneeled next to her, smoothing a hand down her back until she looked at him. And there it was, need and desire and possessiveness rising up inside him like smoke, choking out every shred of common sense.

  Almost.

  “Charlie, you need to listen to me,” he said. “I mean it. This may be more complicated than we realized, and I think we need to get out of the house, just for a day or—”

  He pretended he didn’t feel it coming, pretended that something hit him in the gut, so hard he toppled backwards, skidding across the floor.

  He pretended a little too well. The world went black.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Thanks for coming so quickly. He, um, was balancing on a chair,” Charlie said weakly.

  The EMT guy—his badge said Ricky Kascinski—looked to be about twelve, but he could certainly aim a skeptical look with the best of them. The other guy had gone out to the EMT vehicle to call in a report and put back some of the gear they’d brought in.

  She realized the chairs were all upright and exactly where you’d expect them to be around the kitchen table.

  Kneeling next to Sam, who was conscious after several heart-stopping moments of being slumped on the floor, Ricky mopped up the blood on Sam’s head with an antiseptic wipe and slid a large gauze pad underneath it at the same time.

  “He doesn’t need stitches,” Ricky said, and Sam grunted. “But he should see a doctor tomorrow. Tonight if he can’t stay awake or you see any other symptoms of concussion—” He reeled them off for Charlie’s benefit. “Just call us.”

  “Am fine,” Sam muttered somewhat unconvincingly, and groaned when he tried to sit up further. He’d gone white as paper, and Charlie bit her lip as she took one of his hands.

  “You’re going to need to watch him for several hours off and on, for dizziness or confusion, vomiting. And you can ice the lump on his head in ten-minute intervals, to keep the swelling down.” Ricky peeled off his gloves and tucked them into his kit with the sodden gauze, and then stood up. His thick brown hair flopped over his forehead as he leaned down to catch Sam under one arm.

  Charlie got up and did the same, staggering a little bit as the two of them wrenched Sam to his feet. He muttered through it, attempting to bat Charlie’s hands away, but he didn’t protest when she held on tighter.

  “Is there somewhere comfortable to put him until he recovers a little bit?” Ricky asked. “Got a clean dishtowel for under his head?”

  “Yes,” she said, grabbing a folded one from a shelf on their way out of the kitchen. “He can lie on the sofa.” Charlie helped Ricky steer Sam through the hall and into the front parlor. He sagged onto the sofa, still grumbling, but he let himself be arranged on his back with a cushion under his head.

  Charlie walked Ricky to the door. “Thank you so much,” she said. Her heart was finally beating normally again, or close to it, but she was still jittery. “Okay. Call us or call the hospital if there are changes in his condition.”

  She nodded. He’d gone over the list twice, after all. Once before Sam came to, and once after.

  When Ricky was gone, she closed the door behind him and leaned against it for a fraction of a second, listening to the faint squawking of the radio as the EMT vehicle pulled away.

  “Charlie?” Sam sounded like the tail end of a long day—rough and weak and fading.

  She ran back into the parlor and sank to her knees beside the couch, laying an arm over his chest carefully. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing an ice pack won’t fix,” he said gruffly, and winced as he moved his head. He grabbed her hand when she started to move away, holding her in place. “So ... like I was saying before we were so rudely interrupted ...”

  “I’ll get my stuff,” she said soberly, and kissed him before she ran up the stairs.

  The tentative knock on Lillian’s front door didn’t get through the shriekingly dramatic opera flowing into her earbuds anymore than the EMT vehicle’s siren had. It was Gloria who roused Lillian from an involving mystery novel, jumping on her chest with chunky little paws and pushing the book aside with her snout this time. The dachshund ran into the front hall, barking frantically. It was almost eight o’clock, and Lillian couldn’t imagine who might have stopped by. She opened the door to find Sam leaning heavily on Charlie.

  “What on earth ... ?” Lillian said, and moved aside to let them in.

  “Had a little run-in with our not so friendly apparition after you left,” Sam said wryly, and let Lillian usher him toward the big easy chair nea
r the fireplace.

  “He hit his head,” Charlie said, and to Lillian’s surprise she burst into tears. “He was ... unconscious. I called 911 and the EMTs got here right away—didn’t you hear?”

  “No,” Lillian said, looking astonished and guilty. “I didn’t even see the flashing lights. When I get into a book—oh, never mind.”

  “Anyway, we didn’t want to stay for a second longer than it took to pack a few things and get out,” Charlie said, a little breathlessly.

  Sam was too tactful and too whacked to mention the argument that had led to his taking such drastic action. But Lillian was staring at him, her eyes fixed on the area above his belt. “Your shirt is heaving,” she said.

  “That would be Butch,” he explained. “Charlie realized the cat carrier was in the spare room.”

  He unbuttoned a couple of the topmost buttons and the older woman took a peek inside.

  “That cat sure looks comfortable.”

  “I’m not. He likes it so much he’s digging his claws into my abs,” Sam complained.

  “You’ll both live,” Lillian said with maternal firmness. She’d turned her gaze on Charlie, who looked like she was about to faint.

  Lillian tugged her into her arms and let the girl spill her fear and relief onto her shoulder, wet, hot tears soaking into her sweater. Sam was trying to stand up, and Lillian waved him down with one hand, scowling. “Stay where you are.”

  “Oh, Lillian ...” Charlie sobbed out a few more incoherent words.

  “It’s all right, sweetheart,” she hushed Charlie, rubbing soothing circles against her friend’s spine. The girl was too thin, and she felt terribly breakable in Lillian’s arms. “It’s okay. I’d bet money it would take a lot more than that to do Sam any serious injury.”

  “Hey,” Sam said mildly, but he smiled, too. Butch poked his pointy-eared head out to get a little fresh air, then settled back down, slithering around inside the shirt.

  Sam looked like hell. Smeared blood stained his collar and the back of his shirt, and he was too pale, his hair still slightly sweaty and tousled, circles under his eyes that hadn’t been there a few hours ago.