Ghosts of Boyfriends Past (10 page)

“Can I help you?”

“I’m Curtis Bloom. I’m staying across the street from your shop.”

“Oh?”

“Mm-hmm.” He shifted from foot to foot.

“Enjoying your stay?”

Bloom blushed and ducked his chin.

Whatever else he might have said was lost when Gillian plowed through the crowd and planted herself in front of Biz’s booth. “Your booth looks like death.”

Bloom faded into the crowd.

Biz glared at Gillian. “It does not. Hi, Dave.”

Dave smiled and nodded in greeting but didn’t speak.

He and Gillian couldn’t have been a more unlikely couple. Where she was loud, he was quiet. When she was unyielding, he always went with the flow. He was also three inches shorter than she was and had a naturally thin build, like a marathon runner, which made Gillian look even more like a Valkyrie in comparison.

But he was the only one who’d ever been able to move Gillian when she dug in her heels. She was a rock, but he was the river. Biz was particularly proud of their match. She’d had that tingly feeling in the tips of her fingers on the day she introduced them. The one that used to mean she’d just made another perfect match.

Of course, that was B.C. Before Curse.

“Don’t look now, but that hot reporter’s been watching you from the schnapps tent for the last half hour.”

Ignoring Gillian’s attempt at stealth, Biz immediately swung around to meet Mark’s stare. “What’s he still doing here? I gave him his interview.” She’d confessed to being a nutter who believed in ghosts, and he was still hanging around. Damn the curse. And damn her stupid hormones for being
glad
he was so damned persistent.

“Maybe he likes schnapps,” Dave commented.

“That man isn’t here for the schnapps,” Gillian said.

Biz was inclined to agree with Gillian. Especially when Mark grabbed two Styrofoam cups of fifty-proof Parish Cocoa and began walking straight toward her.

“And I think that’s our cue.” Dave grabbed his wife’s arm and started hauling her away. “Have a fun festival, Biz.”

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Gillian called over her shoulder with a lecherous wink.

Biz’s eyes were locked on the Reporter of Doom stalking toward her with two cups of temptation, but she heard Dave snort as he dragged Gilly away. “At least that leaves her some room to maneuver.”

A chill shot down Biz’s spine that had nothing to do with the January breeze. She didn’t need room to maneuver. She needed a quick escape route. Unfortunately, her booth was smack-dab in the middle of the square, a hangover from when Charmed, I’m Sure was the heart of the town and her booth was the bright red love Mecca that everyone was drawn to throughout the festival.

Mark saw her wary expression, and his dimples flashed out in response. “I come in peace.” He raised the Styrofoam cups. “No questions, just spiked cocoa.”

Biz ignored the Styrofoam peace offering. “Why are you still in town?”

His confident smile didn’t waver for a second, the arrogant punk. “Mrs. Kent told me the Winter Festival wasn’t to be missed.”

Biz looked around, taking in the half dozen folding tables, the overcrowded schnapps tent and the enthusiastic, if slightly off key, local Bluegrass band stomping away in the gazebo. The Winter Festival had always been more of an excuse to take the day off work than a tourist attraction. Even the vendors who set up booths didn’t take themselves seriously, spending more time soaking up peppermint schnapps than hawking their wares.

Biz herself would be mingling with the dancers on the other side of the square, drinking until the music started to sound good, if she didn’t have a curse to break.

“I hear the weather is lovely this time of the year in Raleigh.” She had no idea what the weather was like on the mainland in January and she didn’t care.

“Are you trying to get rid of me, Biz?”

Yes, but I don’t actually want you to leave
. The truth of the thought made her feel guilty in the extreme. If she’d really wanted Mark gone, she could have arranged it. She was on a first-name basis with all two of the Parish Island police officers. All she had to do was say he’d been bugging her and he’d find himself hogtied on the next ferry to the mainland. But she hadn’t. She’d been enjoying his persistence. Enjoying
him
. Mark Ellison made her feel light again when she didn’t think anything could. Which was the worst news she’d had in years. It was bad enough when the curse took someone she liked. What if she really fell for him? What if this year it took someone she started to love?

“I told you everything I know.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Did you?”

How could he tell she’d skimped on the truth? And why did it delight her that he’d called her out on it? Was it just because he was so damn pretty? Had she been dooming him because of her own vanity? Because she was flattered by the attention? God, how pathetic was that? “What do you want?”

“World peace, a picket fence and two-point-two kids with black corkscrew curls.” He tucked a curl that had slipped free of her knot behind her ear, and it sprang upward when he released it, falling loose again. “But I’ll settle for you taking this cocoa and agreeing to a dance with me. Come on. I’m irresistible. And you know I’ll never stop badgering you.”

Biz accepted the Styrofoam cup with a sense of giving in to the inevitable. Her first sip of Parish Cocoa was potent—steeped in vodka, schnapps and fatalism. “Why are you doing this?”

She kept asking him that question, as if by asking it enough he would realize he had no reason to want to be with her. As if she could force him to mistrust the curse’s lethal attraction.

“Because it’s been too long since you’ve let yourself dance, Biz. I looked into the accidents. There was no way any of it was your fault. You’ve got to forgive yourself. Let yourself live a little.”

It was a pretty sentiment. The only problem was it
was
her fault. Hers and no one else’s.

She started to put down the Parish Cocoa, but Mark wrapped his hand over hers on the cup, stopping her.

“Humor me,” he said, with the same self-mocking quirk of his lips that he’d shown her briefly the first time they’d met.

“I’m cursed, Mark. Guys drop dead around me.”

“Guys with terminal illnesses. Last I checked I don’t fit into that category.”

Biz felt something that had been screaming deep inside her for three years suddenly go quiet. “What did you—? Terminal?”

“Paul Lundgren, Gabriel Fox and Anthony Gable. Didn’t they tell you they were dying?” Mark cocked his head to the side. “They all decided to move to Parish after they were diagnosed. I can think of worse places to finish out your days.” He seemed to realize he was still holding her hand on the cup and drew his back, his fingers dragging a slow caress over her skin.

Biz barely felt it. His words had hollowed her out.

For the last three years her life had been filled with one certainty.
She
had killed them. It was her fault. And while knowledge of their impending deaths didn’t make her innocent, it changed the whole flavor of the curse. She was luring
doomed
men to her. Not dooming them herself.

She took a healthy swallow of Parish Cocoa, feeling the combined heat of chocolate and liqueur sliding down her throat to warm her from the inside out.

“Whoa there. Take it easy, darlin’.”

If the curse only touched doomed men, perhaps he was safe. Perhaps it was safe to care for him.

And if not… What harm could it possibly do? He was already doomed. Biz raised the cup to her lips. “
L’chaim
.”
To life
seemed like a suitably ironic toast. She might as well go down laughing.

She closed her eyes, savoring the taste and the feeling, and when she opened them Mark filled her vision, handsome, charismatic and so damned
alive
. The sight sent a ricochet of emotion echoing through her chest. He was stubborn to the point of irritation, charming to the point of arrogance, and handsome to a sickening degree, but alongside all those extremes he was surprisingly malleable, ever changing but never insincere. It was like he spent each moment of his life adapting to new truths, the truth of that moment. If anyone could accept her,
really
accept her for everything she was, it was Mark.

Biz took another swallow of cocoa, with an epiphany chaser. She had to tell him. Not just that, but convince him.

He deserved to know everything. The ghosts were only the tip of it. The witchcraft, the curse. It was his life at stake, after all. If anyone deserved to know her deepest secrets, Mark did.

Maybe he wouldn’t even freak out much.

Telling a reporter was a huge leap of faith. She was coward enough to half hope he wouldn’t believe her. But she had to tell him.

Now the only question was how.

“I need more schnapps.”

Mark was reasonably certain Biz was drunk off her cute little ass.

The slurred speech was a good clue. The way she clung to his front like wallpaper as they swayed to the vaguely musical sounds of the band was another hint. But the kicker was the look in her eyes. The gooey, dreamy, completely unguarded look that made his knees wobble in a distinctly unmanly way every time he saw it.

He was a definite fan of that look. And the Parish Cocoa that had put it there.

“You have to let me go,” she slurred up at him, her arms twined around his neck like clinging vines. “It’s for your own good.”

“Let me worry about my own good. You just hang onto me.” He didn’t think she’d stay upright without the support, and he loved the feel of her body melting against his. What they were doing barely qualified as dancing, but the festival was winding down and those few who hung around were just as plastered—and plastered to one another—as they were.

“Can’t.” She shook her head sadly. “Gotta let you go,” she said, though her arms stayed tangled around him.

Mark had seen survivor’s guilt before. He’d met people with unusual coping mechanisms for the tragedies life handed them, but Biz was different. And not just because she believed the ghosts of her dead exes took care of her.

He’d been trying to put his finger on exactly what it was that was so special about her, exactly what it was that drew him so hard, but her indefinable allure remained undefined. As if it changed as readily as she did.

She was such a peculiar mix of optimism and doom and gloom—her world view was locked into place in so many ways, assigning fate the upper hand, but hope kept leaking in around the edges.

Mark loved the contradictions. Biz was the most interesting story he’d ever found.

And she was an adorable drunk. At first he’d gotten the feeling she was trying to work up the guts to tell him something, but from one cup of Parish Cocoa to the next she’d bypassed liquid courage and stumbled straight into the point where seriousness was a concerted effort.

She frowned up at him with exaggerated concern. “I don’t want you to be the fourth ghost.”

“I won’t be.” Because there was no such thing as ghosts. He smiled reassuringly.

She reached up with her forefinger and tucked the tip into the divot on his cheek. “Dimples of Doom,” she muttered, as the last squeaks from the clarinet player faded.

Half the musicians had already departed, and now the final few shuffled toward their instrument cases and began packing up for the night. Biz continued to sway against his front, oblivious to the lack of music.

“Looks like the party’s over,” he said softly as the remaining couples began to disperse.

Biz closed her eyes and dropped her head against his chest, humming, “Mm-hmm,” and continuing to sway.

A chill breeze touched the back of his neck above his collar, but the combined effects of the Parish Cocoa in his blood and Biz’s body like a flame molded to his front kept him plenty warm. He didn’t particularly want the night to end. All the walls she’d been throwing at him since he arrived had magically toppled tonight, and he didn’t want to chance that they would be resurrected when the Parish Cocoa wore off.

The last straggler tossed a wave in their direction as he headed out of the town square. Mark would have waved back, but that would have meant lifting his arms from Biz.

“We should go,” he murmured against her hair, breathing in the scent of rosemary shampoo.

“Mm,” she hummed agreeably.

Should
had become his enemy. They
should
go, because there was no reason he
should
want to stand in the middle of the Parish Island square freezing his butt off at two o’clock on a Tuesday morning. But he
did
want to—though he had no idea why.

And that was why he extracted himself from Biz’s heat, stepping back until the January chill smacked into him and woke him up with a little perspective. Biz shivered, her own eyes growing less fuzzy as the bracing wind cleared her head somewhat.

“Come on. Let’s get you home.” He caught her hand and tugged her toward the drafty Victorian where she lived with her ghosts.

She fell into step beside him. One of her hands still held his and her opposite one wrapped around his arm so her front was pressed against his biceps as they strolled toward her house. Biz stopped in front of the door to Charmed, I’m Sure and turned to face him. She rocked a little and steadied herself by pressing her back against the door.

“Mark,” she said, so slowly he could hear her working her way through what she wanted to say next. “Hypothetically speaking, if I were to tell you that I was a witch—a real, live, spell-casting, charm-making, potion-brewing witch—what would you say to that?”

“I just might believe you.” He smiled and leaned toward her, his gaze sliding down to rest on her lips. “You’ve certainly bewitched me.”

He thought it was a pretty good line, but Biz reacted like he’d tased her.

“No!” She jolted and slapped both hands against his chest, shoving him back. “No. You can’t fall for me. It’s the kiss of death.
I’m
the kiss of death.”

The word
kiss
snuck into his mind and refused to leave. He pressed against the push of her hands. “I like to live dangerously.”