A Date With the Other Side (24 page)

Amanda blew out a stream of smoke from an almost-gone cigarette. “They left, Thank God. Those people are nuts. They went through every inch of your house, and some even had tape recorders.”

“Don’t worry. They’ll be back tomorrow.” Brady ground out his own cigarette on the bottom of his shoe. “Is Shel okay?”

Boston figured the hell with his suit and dropped to the porch floor next to Brady, resting his arms on his knees. “Yeah, she’s okay. They stitched her up.”

He couldn’t prevent a hearty sigh from escaping. He wanted to be with Shelby, taking care of her, teasing her to laugh. Instead he got blue hair Brady and orange ass Amanda to share his evening with.

“Well, I guess I’ll shove off,” Brady said. “I just didn’t want to leave Amanda here alone.”

“Thanks, man.” Boston let Brady knock their fisted knuckles together before he stood up.

“Sure, Mac. Catch you later, Amanda.” Brady waved and vaulted down off the porch.

Amanda exerted herself to wave, then stared at Brady’s back as he headed down the street into the dusky night. “You know, it’s weird to me that a fifteen-year-old would even think to give a shit about a woman he doesn’t know being left by herself. Howie is like that too, and Danny Tucker. It’s like a freaky sort of code of honor with the men here.”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” And Boston was wondering if he even came close to having it. He liked to think he did, but he’d been raised by selfish people and taught to fend for himself.

Maybe at the root of Shelby’s dumping him was that she didn’t think he had enough integrity for her.

That was a depressing thought.

“It’s a good thing,” Amanda said thoughtfully. “Though I’m not really sure why.”

She started to flick her cigarette over the porch railing, then caught herself. Giving him a shrug, she dropped it into her empty Diet Coke can on the porch floor.

They sat there in silence, something he never would have expected of Amanda. But she just kicked her foot out so the swing rocked back and forth, and stared over into the copse of trees on the right of the house.

Boston drummed his thumbs on his knees, listening to the crickets and wishing something, anything was different. He’d experienced disappointment and frustrations in his life, but he had never been quite this restless, anxious, unwilling to give up. It seemed like if he thought long and hard enough, he should be able to present a solution to their problems that would address all of Shelby’s concerns.

He snorted out loud. That sounded like he was going to sit down and give her a PowerPoint presentation about why she should continue to sleep with him.

“You know, Boston, I’m sorry you got sent here because of my father’s hysteria.”

“It’s okay.” If he hadn’t come, he’d have never met Shelby. He’d have never appreciated that there were people who didn’t give a damn about what he did for a living, or where he lived, or his net worth. He’d have never seen that there was something to be said for living in vinyl happiness on Turkey Trail.

“We’d have never been able to date each other anyway,” Amanda added.

Boston looked over at her, amused. He could think of a half-dozen or so reasons why he couldn’t have dated her, but he wanted to hear hers. “Why not?”

“Because the truth is, we’re both too needy.”

“What?” No, that was most definitely not on his list. “I’m not needy.”

She gave him a patronizing smile, but it wasn’t unkind. “Are too. You and me, we both grew up with workaholic parents, right?”

He couldn’t deny that. He nodded.

“And while we’ve taken different approaches to our own lives, deep down we both just really want someone to love us. To give us that total all-consuming unconditional love.”

Isn’t that what everyone wanted? Of course he wanted someone to love him.

“The problem is, we want it on our terms. You want Shelby to come back to Chicago with you, don’t you?”

“Yes. What’s wrong with that?” Boston forced his hands to relax. He had fisted them listening to Amanda.

Amanda stretched her left leg to the floor, and her dress hiked up to the danger zone. She didn’t bother to adjust it, just turned to him with a lazy sympathetic look. “But you wouldn’t do the same for her.”

Move to Cuttersville permanently? The very thought made a chill run up his spine. “It would be career suicide.”

“I’m not asking you why, I’m just saying you wouldn’t.”

“So you think I’m selfish?” He whacked a mosquito that was getting too friendly with his forearm. He put more force into it than was necessary, annoyed at Amanda’s probings of his psyche.

“I don’t think you’re selfish, I think you’re needy. We put up these walls, defense mechanisms, and have standards that no one could ever possibly meet.”

“What are you, my conscience?” he asked, determined to ignore that Amanda might actually be on to something.

“Your guardian angel, I think.” She gave him a dimpled smile.

“More like the devil,” he grumbled, rubbing his chest with his fist. He really did have a pain there, like he’d eaten overly spicy Mexican.

“No! The devil wears Prada.” Amanda laughed. “This is Juicy Couture.”

He rolled his eyes, amused in spite of himself. “Amanda Del-mar, I do believe that your father is doing you a disservice. You have the logic of an attorney and the legs of a supermodel. You’re Brett’s untapped asset.”

“And will remain that way,” she said, all traces of amusement gone. “He sees what he wants to see.”

Boston fell back onto the porch and stared up at the wooden boards of the ceiling. “I thought that by the time I reached thirty-two, I would have figured it all out. I think I was more confident at twenty than I am now.”

“God, don’t tell me that! I’m only twenty-five and I don’t think I can get any more aimless than I already am.”

He turned his head on his side and grinned. “That
would
be difficult.”

Amanda stuck her tongue out at him and laughed.

Saturday the TV crews showed up.

Gran warned her, having fielded the phone call from the television station as the owner of the White House. They were on their way to conduct interviews and shoot footage.

Shelby ran, her gym shoes pounding the gravel harder than they had since high school track, but when she turned the corner, sweaty and out of breath, she saw she was too late. A van was in the drive, and Boston was on the porch waving his hands at the crew, looking ticked off.

Retreating would be cowardly. She only considered it for a split second. Especially since he glanced up and saw her. She offered a tentative smile and a shrug.

Lord only knew who had called the news. It certainly hadn’t been her. But given the way gossip about the
Gone With the Wind
plates attacking her and Boston had ripped through town, it could have been just about anyone.

Surreptitiously wiping the perspiration off her forehead, Shelby glanced down at her outfit. It revealed to her exactly what she had expected. She looked like a slob in denim shorts and a T-shirt she’d gotten for participating in the March of Dimes. In 1997.

You wouldn’t think it would be hard to take herself to the mall and just pick out a few casual, comfortable, yet moderately stylish outfits. It seemed that it was, however, because she hadn’t, and here she was again, looking like a neglected stepchild.

Boston wasn’t announcing her presence. In fact, he seemed to be gesturing for her to take off running, if she wanted. His head kept tilting to the side as he met her eyes. Coward though she was, she couldn’t do that to him. She’d brought him more aggravation than one man should have to endure over the last three weeks, including being so monumentally stupid as to sleep with him and then suggest it was a bad idea.

Yet he still protected her.

She cleared her throat and walked right up to the porch, weaving her way through the two cameramen and stopping behind a woman wearing a floral skirt and peach sleeveless shirt. “Excuse me. I’m Shelby Tucker, the tour guide for the Haunted Cuttersville Tour, and my grandmother owns this house. Can I help you?”

The woman turned so fast Shelby feared her head might spin off. “I’m Adrienne Ashley, Channel Five Action News.”

She put her hand out and Shelby took it.

Adrienne Ashley gave her hand one good pump, then abandoned it. “We would like to conduct a series of interviews with the people who witnessed the ghost sighting, run some footage of the house, that sort of thing, but Mr. Macnamara doesn’t seem interested in cooperating.”

Red lips pursed and her dark blond helmet hair deigned to shudder in disapproval.

Boston rubbed his jaw. “I wasn’t going to do anything without Shelby’s permission. It’s up to her.”

Shelby paused to wonder how he’d spent his day off. With Amanda? Working? She didn’t even know what he liked to do in his free time, and that made her feel her decision to stop seeing him was the right one. They didn’t really know each other at all.

But they could have. And they did, in the ways that mattered.

Shelby shut up her inner dialogue and tried to focus on Adrienne Ashley’s long self-important nose. “Well, Ms. Ashley, I don’t know.”

Now that sounded intelligent. But for the life of her, she couldn’t decide if it would be a good thing or a bad thing to have the White House immortalized on the eleven o’clock news. Likely, it would just embarrass them all.

Or it could bring business—big business. When Boston moved out, Gran could convert the house into a bed-and-breakfast.

Her answer didn’t please the reporter, especially not when Boston nudged around her and picked up Shelby’s injured hand. “How are you feeling today? Did you take a pain pill?”

He inspected her like he was waiting for her to puddle on the ground again.

“I’m fine, thanks. It doesn’t even hurt.” And she regretted that she’d been such a weenie about the whole thing the night before. It had made it all that much harder to stick to her guns and tell Boston they couldn’t see each other. When he’d stared at her in that hospital ER, his eyes the most delicious rich blue, and looked at her like he wanted to sweep her off to a deserted island and worship at her feet, well, she’d been sorely tempted.

“If you want to do the story, I don’t mind,” he said in a low voice. “I want whatever you want.”

She wanted him, darn it all to hell and back again.

But that wouldn’t pay the bills or pop a bun in her oven, and she was first and foremost a practical person. “It makes sense to do the story. More business.”

He nodded. “That’s what I would do.”

She was probably going to regret this, but then what was life for but regrets? Shelby made no effort to remove her hand from Boston’s as she called for the reporter, who was impatiently pacing the porch. Her professional smile had warped into a gritted lip pull.

“What exactly did you have in mind?” Shelby asked.

“I want to interview everyone who was here yesterday who’s willing to talk on camera. I want to tape myself walking through the home, and I’d really like to have a ghost expert come into the house and make an assessment.”

“A ghost expert?” Shelby didn’t like the sound of that. It seemed like a surefire way to tick Red-Eyed Rachel off, and Shelby imagined Gran wanted to keep intact whatever valuables remained in the house. “I don’t think so.”

Adrienne was persistent. “Well, then, how about we set the cameras up to run day and night and see what we can record? We can run this story in a special segment in a week.”

“Like reality TV?” she blurted out before she could stop herself.

The reporter nodded. “In a way. But we would edit out any time when nothing’s happening. We’re only looking for activity. People will flock here if we get something on tape.”

Oh, swell. Shelby tried to work up enthusiasm. “But then Boston would have cameras invading his privacy.”

“It’s only for a couple of days,” Adrienne scoffed, like she wouldn’t mind having a camera catching her without makeup or hair products.

Boston squeezed her hand. “I don’t mind,” he said, though he looked like a cow had sat on him. In pain.

“You don’t have to do that!”

“My source tells me that the ghosts seem to respond with the most force when the two of you are in the house together,” the reporter remarked, giving their entwined hands an interested stare.

“Who is your source?” So Shelby could hunt them down and kill them.

“Normally I don’t reveal names, but since we need your cooperation in order to do this, I’ll tell you. It was Brady Stritmeyer and Amanda Delmar.”

“What?” Shelby squeaked. Her own flesh and blood…

“I guess it wasn’t wise to leave them together at the house,” Boston said, looking more amused than annoyed.

“What are you smiling at? You’re the one who’s going to get stuck with a camera watching you sleep for two days.”

“Well, actually,” Adrienne interjected. “I was hoping you’d stay in the house as well to ensure that we get things, uh, riled up.”

She was getting all riled up, alright.

Because Boston was now grinning.

He should tell Adrienne Ashley, reporter, to leave Shelby out of it. He should remember his own resolve to respect her wishes and stay away from her, for both her sake and for the safety of his heart.

But it was too good of an opportunity to pass up. Shelby sharing the White House with him day and night, torturing him with her sweet natural scent and her no-nonsense attitude. It would be difficult not to want to make love to her, but with the cameras playing Peeping Tom, he figured he could control himself.

And it was a way to steal more time with Shelby before he had to leave Cuttersville behind.

It might not have been the wisest thing he’d ever done, but he nodded enthusiastically. “I think that’s an excellent idea, Ms. Ashley. You can set the cameras and sound equipment up and let them run for the remainder of the weekend. Monday I have to go to work, so I need them to be removed by then.”

Before Shelby could interject, he swept his arm open. “Come on in and get started.”

“Excellent.” Adrienne gestured to her cameraman and they went in the front door.