Christmas Spirit Read online

  He was slipping, he thought, resisting the impulse to run a hand over his face wearily. You didn’t judge an interviewer going into it. You asked questions, you listened, you did the research, you told the story as objectively as you could. He’d learned that as early as college, when he wrote a piece about the evolution of gang warfare in Los Angeles.

  Of course, facing weeks of research on the coastline’s haunted houses, when he didn’t for a minute believe in ghosts, was bound to make him a little cranky.

  “Anyway,” she went on with a wistful smile, “I was in there poking around one minute and the next I had to sit down. The heat just enveloped my entire body.”

  The heat must have enjoyed that, he thought irrationally. Something in her tone made him look up from the depths of his mug. Embarrassment? Unease? He couldn’t tell, but she was blushing again, cheeks hot with color.

  “There must be more to it than that,” he said softly. Interested, despite himself. God, he really was losing his edge.

  “There is.” Her fingers tightened around her mug, knuckles going white with pressure, but she looked straight at him, eyes wide and unafraid. “And if you come upstairs with me, maybe I can show you.”

  Chapter Two

  She should have known better, really, Charlie thought an hour later, sitting stiffly on the edge of the unmade bed in the spare room, Sam beside her, solid and male and patently disbelieving that anything was ever going to materialize. The truth was that she’d never felt that strange heat, sensed that awful, desperate need this early in the day, and she had no idea why she’d thought she could summon it at will.

  Stubbornness, she supposed. It wasn’t as if she couldn’t read Sam’s skepticism as easily as a giant headline, after all. HOT GHOST OR HOMEOWNER HOOEY? She could see the front page now, complete with a photo of Sam’s smirk and a caption. Our Reporter Gets the Scoop for Ya!

  He scratched his head idly, and she was pretty sure he was doing his best to hold back a yawn. Damn it. The ghost or spirit or whatever it was—she personally liked the word specter—was real, really, truly real. And now she was determined to prove it.

  “It usually happens either late in the afternoon or at night,” she said finally, hating the note of desperation in her voice. “And it usually surprises me. By the way, you might want to make a note of the fact that it seems to like eggnog, and it prefers the kind I make fresh.”

  Sam looked somewhat impressed. “I didn’t know anyone made fresh eggnog. All I’ve ever had is that gooey stuff that you get at the supermarket.”

  “It’s not difficult. I’ll give you the recipe—real eggnog is actually like a protein shake but sweet. Anyway, I bought some of the readymade too just to keep him—her—it—happy. The ghost definitely spikes it. The level of the whiskey bottle keeps dropping.” She hated the uh-huh look he gave her.

  “I see,” he said.

  A master of tact, she thought wryly. He was probably thinking that she was hitting the whiskey, downing it in teacups, starting at breakfast.

  “Eggnog. Fresh. I made a mental note,” he said briskly. “Anything else?”

  “I don’t know where it comes from or why.”

  “No family history?” He stopped himself. “I sound like a doctor or something. But you know what I mean. Were there stories of it appearing to some people but not others, visitations at a certain time of year, anything like that?”

  She shrugged, a motion that continued into her raising her hands palms upward. “Dunno. Maybe ... maybe it only appears at Christmas, like the clanking character with all the chains in Dickens.”

  She could not for the life of her think of the name of the spirit. Kick in, English degree, she commanded. Nothing doing. Sam Landry—being on the same bed as Sam—was a potent distraction.

  “Marley. A Christmas Carol. Right.”

  She looked at him with a little surprise. Maybe he’d been an English major, too, doomed like her to a lifetime of scratching to make a living. Another reason to like him as much as she lusted after him.

  “But it doesn’t clank. Or maybe it knows we’re waiting and it’s ... shy?”

  The moment the word slipped out she wanted to kick herself. But when she saw the expression of weary incredulity in Sam’s eyes, she decided she wanted to kick him.

  “I’m really not crazy, you know.” She stood up, stretching legs which had gone stiff after an hour of sitting immobile on the bed. She’d left the curtains drawn, keeping the light out, and with most of the furniture shrouded in sheets once more, the room certainly felt spooky, stripped of any personality or signs of life. “I’m not some New Age woo-woo type. I have a master’s degree in American Literature and I taught high school English for seven years.”

  “What happened?”

  “My last red pencil broke and I decided to quit. That was just before I came up here. But the point is, people trust me with their children and, yes, I am sane. I’d never even thought about ghosts before I moved in here, not outside of fiction, anyway, since the book I’m writing sort of hinges on the supernatural, but I know what I’ve seen and heard and felt. And this house is haunted.”

  She took a deep breath, surprised at herself. She sounded so ... determined.

  Sam, on the other hand, looked a little stunned. He blinked once, and then breathed out something like a laugh as he ran his hand through his tousled hair.

  “You’re writing a book?”

  She frowned. “Yes, but that’s not the point. The point is—”

  “You think the house is haunted. Believe me, I get it.” He grinned at her and stood up, and when his fingers curled around her wrist, she nearly jumped. His hands were huge, which wasn’t a surprise since he had to be over six feet tall, towering over her barely five feet five inches, but his grip was also amazingly strong. And masculine. And warm. And wonderful.

  Oh boy, it had been a long time since a man had touched her. And a man like Sam had never touched her, ever.

  “We’ve been sitting here for an hour without talking and to be honest, I’m falling asleep,” he said as he tugged her toward the bedroom door. “You know what they say about a watched pot.”

  “Yes, but ...” She glanced over her shoulder at the dim, hulking shapes of the furniture, crouched there under sheets, and knew it was useless. There was nothing in the air, none of that strange crackling electricity she usually sensed.

  “I have another appointment at three,” he explained as they headed down the stairs.

  Damn it. She should have told him more about the house’s history, the day she’d heard the laughing voice in the upstairs hallway, all of it. Instead she’d made them sit there in silence, waiting, awkward, and bored.

  Not that it mattered, she told herself as she followed him back into the kitchen. So the house wouldn’t make it into yet another article about the haunted houses of New England. It wasn’t even her idea, and part of her wondered if Aunt May and the rest of the family would be turning in their graves if they knew she not only believed in some kind of spirit life in the house but was telling people about it.

  She’d moved in here for one reason, giving up her tiny Providence apartment and quitting her job—because Aunt May’s death had given her a place to live rent-free and the modest money that had come with it was going to allow her to take a year off and finish the book she’d started back in college. She didn’t have time to waste worrying about a cute reporter with a wolf ’s grin and an attitude the size of Canada. The article didn’t matter.

  But proving herself to Sam Landry in some small way did. Especially when she looked into those sharp blue eyes and saw herself reflected there, looking like some nerdy schoolgirl who lived with her nose in a book and had finally let her imagination run away with her.

  Which wasn’t too far from the truth, she realized with a pang of dismay.

  “Why don’t you come back?” she said suddenly, stepping in front of him when he’d gathered his things from the table and turned toward the hall. “Tonigh
t. Sometime after dark, not too late.” She sounded a bit desperate again, but she couldn’t help it at the moment. “I’ve heard or seen things several times after dark, in that room. Really.”

  He studied her, and it was hard not to squirm under his gaze, wondering what he really saw when he looked at her, what he heard in her tone that she hadn’t intended.

  “How does eight sound?” he asked a moment later, with a gentler smile than she’d seen yet.

  “Eight sounds perfect,” she said, and let herself breathe again.

  He nodded, eyes glowing. “It’s a date, then.”

  Ulp.

  “No, it’s not,” she rushed to protest, following him into the hall, heart pounding. “A date, that is. Um, I mean, that’s not what I meant, I just wanted to give you a chance to—”

  “It’s just a figure of speech,” he said, and the way he was very obviously trying not to smirk infuriated her. “We can call it a stakeout if you want.”

  She flushed. “Well, that’s a little closer, yes.”

  One side of Sam’s mouth curved into a smile then, sly and knowing. “See you at eight, then.”

  She stood staring at the door when he was gone, torn between frustration and excitement and enormous dread that they would spend another few hours sitting in silence while the ghost stubbornly stayed away and made her look like a fool.

  Butch curled around her ankles, his tail flicking at her calf. He stopped and looked up at her, narrowed gold cat’s eyes disdainful.

  “Oh, what do you know?” she said out loud, and trudged back upstairs to her desk.

  Two hours later Sam was fairly certain he should have stuck around at Charlie’s, no-show ghost or not.

  “Let me show you the videotape now,” Marie Fogwell said, sorting through the mountain of books and papers on the roll top desk beneath the window. “It’s a bit grainy, but you can clearly see the outline of Captain Grayson on the stairs ...”

  “I, uh.” Sam stood up so suddenly, he actually made himself a little dizzy. If he sat here for one more minute listening to Marie ramble on and on about poor doomed Captain Grayson and the way he liked to hover near her shoulder when she was drinking her tea in the evenings, he would probably be certifiably insane. “I think you’ve told me so much already, and so ... you know ... vividly that a tape could only be a disappointment.”

  Marie hesitated, clearly hovering between pride at her storytelling skills and disappointment that he had rejected her best prize, and Sam turned on his smile. “You’ve been so helpful, Mrs. Fogwell,” he said, and crossed the room, notebook and recorder already stashed beneath one arm, to take her hand. “I’m eager to get back to my room and write your story, I hate to wait.”

  “Well ...” Her pale wrinkled cheeks colored prettily and her faded brown eyes were shy as she looked up at him. “I can’t wait to read it, of course. I keep a scrapbook of all of the stories about Captain Grayson, you see.”

  Of course she did. Along with the dozens of books about whaling, ships, Martha’s Vineyard history, men’s clothing in the 1800s, paranormal phenomena, haunted houses ... He brightened his smile and withdrew his hand slowly. “Soon you’ll have one more,” he reassured her. “I’ll let you know if I have any other questions, but for now I want to thank you for your time and sharing your story with me.”

  All said while backing slowly toward the front door, conscious of the overlapping braided rugs on the floor and the dusty knickknacks crowded up to the edge of every available surface. Good thing old Grayson couldn’t knock anything over, he thought.

  “Oh, of course, you call me anytime,” Marie said, hand over her heart. “I’m always happy to discuss Captain Grayson.”

  Oh, he was definitely getting that idea, all right. He didn’t breathe a sigh of relief until he was out the door and inside the Jeep he’d rented just yards away from the ferry dock. Tossing his notebook and recorder on the seat beside him, he leaned his head back against the seat and groaned.

  This was only the beginning, too. He’d started here on the island, where the weather was bleakest, because he wanted to get it over with. No snow, nothing photogenic. The dunes seemed huddled down against raw, scouring winds off the ocean. What a time to come back to the Vineyard after all these years. And he had twelve stops to make when he was through here, up and down the coast from Maine to Connecticut, and would have to listen to a dozen wishful, starry-eyed, completely ridiculous stories about mournful spirits and cold spots and banging noises and otherworldly noises coming from the attic.

  He gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles ached. He needed a drink. Or a convenient coma.

  Six months ago he’d been researching an in-depth piece on poverty in America. Before that he’d tackled a U.S. senator’s military record, which had turned out to be a lot spottier than he’d claimed, and before that a gritty, close-up look at hard drug use among teenagers in a small Illinois town.

  Now? He was writing for Scoop and talking to sweet little old ladies who had clearly memorized The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, and a stubborn, shy, strangely kissable young woman who was probably having hallucinations.

  His cell rang, rumbling out the first few bars of a Kelly Clarkson song. His last girlfriend had changed it the day they’d broken up, and he couldn’t figure out for the life of him how to reset it. He figured it was probably a good thing he’d ended things when he had, or he might have found his laptop swimming in a bathtub full of water.

  “This is Landry.”

  “Dude. Hey. Kev here. How’s Martha’s Vineyard treating you?”

  Sam stifled a groan. The last person he wanted to talk to was Kevin “Hey-Dude” West, his new editor. He was barely out of college, wore colored contacts, and seemed convinced that being assistant features editor of a national entertainment magazine made him some kind of media mogul.

  “I just got here, Kevin.” He let the last word linger, and couldn’t help smiling. He could practically hear the guy vibrating with irritation.

  “Sweet. Just checking in, dude,” Kevin said finally, voice as smooth as ever. Sam heard the background chatter of the busy New York office, a female voice laughing and a phone ringing. “How did the first two interviews go?”

  Well, aside from the fact that he could have conducted them in his sleep after interviewing the heads of drug cartels and mob families, pretty well, he thought.

  And since when did he need to be checked in on? He wasn’t some novice reporter who didn’t even know how to write a lead. He desperately needed this job, but he hated it, put it that way. But he had no right whatsoever to whine, he told himself. Newspapers and magazines were shutting up shop right and left and he read the AP and Reuters feeds—the whole country was wracked with economic woes. Get a freakin’ grip, he told himself. But he still wasn’t going to let Kevin be the boss.

  “Kevin, I’ve got a lonely old belle in love with a ship’s captain who died a hundred and fifty years ago, and a young woman who doesn’t even know what she’s seeing or hearing or whatever the hell it is she claims is happening. And for the record, I don’t even know why Scoop is running this piece. It’s not like it’s going to be ‘Haunted Houses of the Rich and Famous.’”

  “Angel Pants, I said half-caf, not decaf, and extra foam, not none,” Kevin said, not even bothering to cover the mouthpiece. “Sorry for the interruption, dude. I mean, it’s just coffee. How hard can it be?”

  For an assistant who let a jerk like Kevin call her Angel Pants and make her fetch him a foofy latte? Pretty hard, not to mention pretty goddamn stupid. He felt sorry for the girl.

  “Anyway,” Kevin went on, not waiting for Sam to answer. “We’re branching into some travel pieces, trying them on for size. So the up-and-down the coast thing is, like, right. And dude, all that paranormal shit is hot right now. People dig being scared.”

  Sam was clutching his cell so hard, he was going to crush it any minute. If this smartass kid called him “dude” one more time ...

  “I’m expec
ting an awesome piece from you, Landry,” Kevin went on, obviously oblivious to the frustrated outrage that had to be blasting through the line. “I think we really connect, and there are a bunch of story ideas I want to dialogue with you when you come in.”

  Sam narrowly avoided banging his head on the steering wheel. Kevin mangled the English language like it was an empty soda can, and he was supposed to take him seriously? “I’ll be in touch,” he growled instead, and hung up, tossing his cell into the backseat.

  Suddenly an evening with Charlie Prescott’s shy smile and stubborn eyes sounded like the perfect thing to take his mind off the disaster his life had become.

  Chapter Three

  “Charlie? You home?” Lillian Bing pushed open the back door to the mudroom off the kitchen, Gloria’s nails clicking on the floor as the dog preceded her into her neighbor’s house. “Charlie? I brought day-olds from the store.” She doffed her coat and hat and waited.

  “Hey, Lillian.” Charlie smiled as she walked into the kitchen, leaning down to scratch Gloria behind the ears. “I thought I heard a faint-but-familiar crackle.”

  “You did. One more time.” Lillian set a white paper bag on the table and crackled it very loudly. “I got lemon squares, blondies, and two chocolate croissants. Gingerbread women, no men. And a nice fat shortbread Santa.”

  “I thought you said no men.”

  “I have absolutely nothing against men in the least,” Lillian protested. “I wish there were a few single ones in my age range on this island but no. Anyway, I think of Santa as kind of sexless.”