A Haunted Romance (3 page)

“And a computer. Computers are great.” He went over and looked at the wounded wall. “I can fix that. Will take maybe a week after that before I can paint it. You like the color of this room?”

The walls were mauve. “Not especially.”

“What color would you like it?”

“I can handle the painting,” Chelsea said with a smile.
I’m not completely helpless.

Dalton shrugged. “Suit yourself. I can be over tomorrow sometime to fix your wall. The sooner I patch it, the sooner you can paint.”

Tomorrow. Trent was coming over tomorrow. Part of her thought it would be awfully nice to have Trent all to herself. For that matter, Dalton was something of a looker too, even if a bit distant. Distance could change. Staggering them had its possibilities.

She shook her head. She hadn’t had sex in a long time, and now she was planning to screw half the town? It was probably safest to have both men around at the same time, actually. “Tomorrow would be good.”

“I’ll come over after lunch, then?”

“Sure.”

He smiled. “Excellent.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets but didn’t make any move to go.

In the awkward silence, her tummy reminded her uncomfortably that she was hungry. She could offer him one of her microwave meals, but she only had enough to last her for a couple days, and she didn’t even know where the grocery store was yet. There was so much to do.

The silence was broken by a shriek.

Chapter Two

That didn’t sound like any animal
. She grabbed her upper arms and shivered. Maybe a human could make that noise. It came from outside.

Dalton ran down the stairs. She followed. She didn’t know if they were running away from the sound or toward it until he ran out the back door. She didn’t follow. He had shoes on, and she didn’t. She hadn’t noticed his shoes before. Since he hadn’t tracked mud in apparently he’d succeeded at wiping them clean before he’d entered the house. The ground had dried a little bit too. That made it easier, but she still wasn’t going out in bare feet, and her boots were at the other door, sitting inside the box that had held her books.

She wasn’t sure she much liked being alone inside either. People made shrieks like that in her books, usually a few minutes before Cat found their gruesomely murdered bodies.

She moved to the window, but she lost track of where Dalton had gone in the darkness. It probably wasn’t too dark to see out there, but the light in the kitchen was killing her night vision. She had no intention of sitting alone in the dark, so she just waited.

He came back shrugging a few minutes later. “I didn’t see anything,” he said. “Just one of those noises, I guess.”

“I guess,” Chelsea agreed. “Sounded like someone getting murdered.”

“Or Johnston with one of his girlfriends, but I doubt the noise would carry all the way here.” Dalton chuckled.

Trent was that popular, huh? Chelsea’s heart clenched, but she knew she didn’t have any reason. Trent was just a helpful neighbor, like Dalton. No more. What he did wasn’t any of her business.

“Hey,” said Chelsea, “would you mind sticking around while I go get my stuff from the car? It’s getting dark out.”
And I don’t want to be walking around outside with a murderer on the loose.

“I’ll stay all night long if you ask me to.”

She looked at him sharply, trying to see if he was flirting with her as much as she thought he was. But whether he meant it as a joke, a flirtation, or a simple matter of fact, she couldn’t tell.

She put on her boots, dragged the microwave and the cooler up the steps, shoved them inside the doorway, and closed the door behind her. Regardless of how much the place needed to air out, those doors were staying closed after the sun went down from now on.

“Tell me,” she asked. “Have you ever heard anything about this house being haunted?”

“Haunted? Yes, there are rumors of that in town. You don’t think that sound…?”

Yes, she did think that sound. “Great.”

“Want me to stay?”

She could feel Cat glaring at her. She spent too much time inside Cat’s head, and now her detective was returning the favor. She slowly shook her head.

“Very well.”

She walked him to the front door.

He turned at the doorway. “Pleasant dreams,” he said.

Right
. “Good night.” Chelsea shut the door behind him and locked it. If there’d been a deadbolt, she’d have thrown it.

There’s no reason to be spooked, she told herself. She set up the microwave in the kitchen and nuked herself some teriyaki chicken.

The fridge wasn’t as bad as she expected. She had to hold her nose while she poured out some really old milk, but there weren’t any full-blown science experiments going on in there. There was even a can of generic cola, unopened, in the door. And the refrigerator was otherwise empty. Good—she’d had enough of the heebie-jeebies for the evening. She loaded her microwavables into the freezer. The six-pack of Diet Pepsi she’d brought along she stuffed in the fridge.

She ate her chicken in the dining room in blessed silence. No condo noises, no screams in the night. By the time she finished, she was feeling positive again. There was no use getting worked up about a cat screeching outside or some odd patterns in the dust on the floor. Tomorrow she’d clean the floors and the dust wouldn’t matter.

She turned on her laptop and wrote for several hours before bed, far too involved in the tortures she was putting Cat Connors through to think about anything else. The music she had blaring on iTunes would drown out all but the most determined shrieker anyway.

She glanced at the walls before going to sleep. There weren’t any new pictures hanging in the master bedroom or anything else out of order. It had been quite a day, and she’d let her imagination run away with her a little. She’d have to get used to the country sounds and the oddities of an old house. Once she did, she had the feeling a solitary life in the country was going to suit her quite well. She climbed into her sleeping bag and slept like a baby until morning.

* * *

Chelsea woke up to the sound of an engine. It took her a moment to realize where she was. The sound had come from out back. She opened her curtains.

Trent was there, pushing a red machine that looked kind of like a mower but was turning the ground under instead of cutting the weeds. He’d been at it a while, from what she could see. Now and then he’d stop and yank something up by the roots. He’d accumulate the weeds he uprooted in his hand, and when he passed by the center of the flat area he was tilling, he’d toss the selected plants into a pile.

She gulped. He’d been doing all that work while she slept. If she’d had eggs, she’d have made him breakfast, but she’d only brought a box of Cheerios and some milk to put on them.

She knocked on the window, trying to get his attention. He didn’t notice her until he shut off the engine. He waved.

A gust of wind from below her caught her yellow nightshirt, flinging it up just as she reached up to wave back. She grabbed the shirt and pulled it down. Now where had that come from? There was a vent a few feet away—that was probably it, although the breeze had felt cool on her skin rather than warm like the air from the vent should be. Maybe the pilot light had blown—she’d have to find the heater and relight it. Oh well. Hopefully she’d caught it in time. Trent was still watching her from below. She didn’t think she’d flashed him too badly, although he was certainly at the perfect angle to look up her shirt.

She waved again, let the curtains fall closed, and went over to check the vent. It was blowing warm air. Good. She’d have to explore the basement sometime, but she sure wasn’t interested in doing it now. She might not even have a pilot light. She’d asked the agent to turn on all the utilities, but the range was electric, and the heater might well be too.

She got dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. The jeans didn’t flatter her, but she was determined to go out and work in the yard. She wasn’t going to let her neighbors do all the work while she hung around in a dress or slept in. She pulled on her jacket. It had to be around fifty degrees out.

She put some hot water on the stove for tea and walked out to greet her neighbor properly.

He noticed her approaching and killed the engine. “Hey. Your yard’s in better shape than I’d feared.” Sweat made his face glisten. He must have been working hard, because it wasn’t sweating weather. Chelsea was wearing her winter jacket, although Trent had his shirtsleeves rolled up just like the day before.

“That’s good. Thank you, you’ve been working hard,” Chelsea said. “Can I get you some tea?”

“Nope. I’ve got a thermos of coffee right over there. You planning to live here, Chelsea, or just turn the place around to sell it?”

Chelsea smiled. “I’m here to stay, I think. I-I guess I haven’t decided yet.”

“It’d be nice if you stayed. But the commute back to DC has got to be a killer. Where do you work?”

Chelsea hesitated. If she said she was a writer, he’d want to know what she wrote, and pretty soon the town would know. The Cat Connors books were written under a pseudonym for a reason—the sex scenes in them would make her mother blush, for one thing, but above all she wanted her privacy. In fact, freedom from distractions was why she came out here. “I work from home.”

“Sweet. What do you do?”

That was the next logical question, wasn’t it? “Oh, just boring stuff.”

Trent chuckled. “I doubt very much that anything about you is boring.”

She blushed. She could see what women saw in Trent. Even beyond the fact that he was drop-dead gorgeous, he had a way with words. She wasn’t going to be pulled in, though. She never had good luck with men. Since she didn’t have a witty comeback, she looked around the yard. “You’ve been at this for a while.”

Trent nodded. “A few hours. I’d rather work before the sun gets up too high. Even in the cool part of the year, if you’re working up a sweat and the sun’s beating down on you, it’s a lot more tiring. What are you going to do about the bed?”

She blinked. Was that a proposition? “I don’t think we’re to that point, Mr. Johnston.”

He laughed. “That’s a shame, but I meant the bed frame.” He pointed past her to where the mostly iron bed frame lay against the shed. There was a stack of wooden slats next to it. “Are you gonna use it? It’s been sittin’ out here ever since your brother came, and it’s got some rust on it. It’d be easy enough to polish though, and less hassle probably than cartin’ something up here from the city. It looks pretty sturdy to me.”

Chelsea looked at the slats doubtfully and then picked one up. She wrinkled her nose. It was a little damp and smelled like her parent’s basement.

Trent was next to her and grabbed a slat himself. “The ones on top have been getting’ a bit wet, but the ones beneath it are probably in better shape.” He tapped it against the wall. “Yep. The other ones can be replaced by regular timber. Just a quick cut really. Nothin’ complicated about ’em. Once you get it set, it’ll last you a long time.”

“It was Aunt Pat’s bed?”

“I’m guessin, yeah.”

Chelsea smiled. “I should be able to clean it out here. Once I do, would you help me get it in?”

Trent grinned. “Sure.”

Soon they had it set up in the master bedroom, right next to the sleeping bag. “The slats just go across here,” Trent told her. There were two rows for them from the bar in the center to the sides. “Queen-size, looks like. And you’ll want a box spring maybe.” He shrugged. “You can bring the slats in yourself.”

She nodded. “Thank you.”

“No problem. Nice painting, by the way. Yours?”

“Aunt Pat’s, maybe. I found it…” she hesitated. “On the floor, right underneath this hook. It fell down when I entered the house, I think.”

Trent’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t say anything. “Mind if I take a closer look?”

“No, feel free.”

“Nice work,” he said at last. “Probably worth a pretty penny too.”

“Why’s that?”

Trent shrugged. “You’d probably want to ask an expert to make sure it’s genuine. And Simeon Solomon’s not a major painter, but he was a significant minor one. I had no idea your aunt had somethin’ like this, but I suppose she thought it was better not to display it too openly. Enough gossip went on about her and Joann as it was.”

“Were they lovers?” Chelsea blurted it out and then felt chagrined at having asked it so suddenly.

Trent stared at her. “You didn’t know? They didn’t talk about it, I suppose. But yes, everyone knew they were. Nobody too much minded since they kept to their own business. Small towns can be cruel sometimes, but Pat and Joann—well, they may have been queer, but most people figured they were
our
queers.” He shrugged. “I figure if God made ’em that way, I got no business sayin’ they should be any different. And if there ain’t no God to have made ’em, then He don’t exist to be disapprovin’ either.”

Chelsea took a moment to digest all that and then nodded.

Trent was looking under the picture frame. “It fell, you said?”

“I heard a horrible crash, and it was the only thing that looked like it could have caused it. And the dust was disturbed around it.” It had been kicked up enough now that she really couldn’t show Trent what she meant, so she didn’t try.

“It would be pretty hard, I think, to even set this up in a way that it would fall from just a little movement in the house. You’d have to catch this wire just on the edge, leave it there—I don’t know, Chelsea, seems funny to me.”

“Yeah, it’s weird all right. So what’s your explanation? Ghosts?”

Trent chuckled. “I’m not rulin’ it out, but that’s probably even less likely than the idea that it was balancin’ on the edge.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Trent knit his brows in concentration and then shrugged. “Don’t know.”

Chelsea frowned. “How come you know about this Simoleon—”

“Solomon. Simeon Solomon.”

“How do you know about this guy? I’ve never heard of him, and I took an art history class in college.”

He looked at her for a bit. “Never did go to college,” he said at last, his drawl slower than usual. “Might have helped. Who knows?”