Ghosts of Boyfriends Past (14 page)

He’d been falling in love with Parish Island since day one. The natural beauty of the island, the manicured charm of the town, and the way the community huddled together through the winter hibernation, waiting for the thriving tourist season again.

And then there was Biz.

What was it about her that consumed him? He’d never been the kind to moon over women in the past. Was it just the chase? The challenge of her? Biz had said she wanted patience, but what she seemed to mean by that was distance. Even when he had his arms around her, she tucked away pieces of herself. Which he could understand, given her background, but was that the only reason he was still chasing? Because she was still running?

She definitely kept him on his toes. From the first she’d seemed to see through his standard charm offensive, but even without that shiny veneer she liked him. Not because he was quick and smarmy, but for all the things he downplayed.

Mark frowned. Maybe that was why she was still running. He was still downplaying his good-guy tendencies. Maybe it was time to change that.

A gust of wind shook Biz’s hazardous awning, taunting him.

He’d thrown his tools into the trunk before driving back down here. A hammer, a few nails…he’d seen Mr. Whittaker with a ladder the other day.

Mark grabbed his coat and thumped down the stairs two at a time. It was time to show Biz she could rely on the living.

For the second time in as many weeks, Biz woke fully clothed on her library floor to the sound of hammering. She groaned and shoved aside the grimoire lying open on her stomach. She’d fallen asleep looking for a loophole in the
true love
aspect of the spell and woken with a pounding headache. “Dammit, Gillian.” She rolled groggily to her feet and shuffled toward the stairs.

“Gilly,” she shouted as she trudged down. “Knock it off, you psycho!”

The pounding continued without even a courtesy pause.

“Gillian!” she shouted again, gathering steam and channeling all her frustration toward this handy target as she navigated the storeroom. But when she burst into the shop itself, it was empty. The lights off, only a trickle of light coming through the front window where a dark figure swayed and loomed outside.

Outside, where the banging originated.

She opened the front door and the sound redoubled.

Mark stood atop the ladder propped against the house. He leaned across the awning above the front door, his muscles shifting deliciously beneath the soft cotton of his shirt, but Biz couldn’t see past the way the ladder bounced and shifted unstably with each swing of the hammer.

“What the hell are you doing?” she screeched, loud enough to stop the banging. The ladder creaked as Mark leaned to the side to see her.

“Hey. Your awning was bowing. It needed to be reinforced.”

“For which I can hire a contractor.” Panic sharpened her voice to a knife’s edge.

“Why bother when I can do it?”

“Without breaking your neck?”

He snorted. “Ideally, yeah.” Mark returned his attention to the nail in front of him and whacked it a few more times.

“Couldn’t this wait?” Biz shouted over the racket.

“Is the noise bugging you? I’m almost done.”

“It isn’t the noise!” Biz took a deep breath, trying to reclaim some semblance of rationality and calm. “Do you think you could possibly avoid life-threatening activities for the next two weeks?”

Mark glanced down at her again, and his eyebrow took the slow upward quirk she was coming to know so well. “Your definition of life threatening differs from mine.”

She ground her molars. “Humor me.”

Mark went still atop the ladder, studying her face. “Biz,” he said softly.

“Please, Mark. Just get down.”

He nodded once, tucked the hammer into a loop on the side of his jeans and climbed down, each quick step bouncing the ladder against the house. When his feet touched the ground, she could finally take a deep breath again.

Mark glanced up at the awning with a wry smile. “It could have come down at any time. A good stiff wind on Valentine’s Day and it could have crashed right on my head as I came to visit you.”

Her stomach turned inside out. “God, Mark, don’t even think it.”

“I should probably warn you I have my eye on refinishing the floors in your dining room and fixing that wobbly stair rail.”

She was
not
going to tell him about the leak in the roof. He didn’t need any more ideas involving plummeting to his death. “You can’t avoid power tools? It’s only for a couple weeks.”

He cupped her shoulders and bent his head until their foreheads were almost touching. “Biz. I’m gonna do this for you, I’m gonna be fine, and you’re gonna say,
Thank you, Mark
.”

“Mark…”

“Your ghosts aren’t the only ones who get to take care of you.” There was steel in his voice.

Oh, wow. Was that my inhibitions that just fell to the floor?
Right at that moment, Biz decided there was nothing sexier on the face of the planet than a man who was determined to mend all your awnings—both physical and metaphorical.

“I’m gonna go…” she waved in the general direction of the door, “…open the shop.”

He dropped a quick kiss on her mouth, his fingers briefly tangling in her hair and loosening the knot she’d tried to shove it into. She knew she was blushing fiercely as she sent a hurried look up and down the street before ducking back inside. Not that all of Parish didn’t already suspect that she and Mark were an item, especially after the schnapps festival. But if it wasn’t just gossip, if it was acknowledged fact, that made it that much harder for her to pretend nothing was happening. To pretend she wasn’t sliding down the slope into an emotional territory she wasn’t ready to visit.

But that she had to visit.

For the last few days she’d been trying, rather pathetically, to fall in love while keeping Mark at arm’s distance. It wasn’t actually a good strategy. She needed a plan. A failsafe, fall-in-love course of action.

Luckily, she knew people who knew love.

Biz perched on her stool and snagged her phone off the cradle, dialing the clinic number from memory.

Gillian must have seen the caller ID before she picked up because she answered with a hopeful, “Did he break something this time? Is there arterial bleeding?”

Biz carefully ignored that shudder-inducing thought. “Gillian. I need your help planning a dream date.”

Gillian groaned. “Are you sure you called the right number? I’m so not the one to ask about the mushy-feelings crap, Bizby.”

“But you’re in love. Tell me about the date that got you there.” Biz pulled a pen and paper from beneath the counter. “And don’t leave anything out.”

Chapter Nineteen—Better Living Through Chemistry

Operation True Love was an unequivocal failure. Biz sat in the shop, staring at the Valentine’s decorations she’d put back up again in an attempt to feel gushy and romantic, and contemplated the breakdown of her plan.

Outside, a winter storm pelted the streets with rain and the occasional splattering of hail, perfectly matching her mood.

Mark was probably off picking up supplies for more Mortal Peril Home Improvement, looking for some new and creative way to get his ass killed, and she was left here, trying to prevent her magic juju from playing a part in his death wish.
The idiot.

He had been wonderful. Even the boys had been surprisingly considerate—no more pranks or attacks and fewer sightings than usual. No, the love failure was all on her.

In the last week and a half, she’d tried every romantic gambit she could think of. They’d done dinner and movie, romantic walks, evenings in front of a cozy fire—which had been somewhat less than cozy since there was always a fifth-wheel feeling whenever the boys were around. She’d drunk her weight in champagne and nibbled more chocolate-covered strawberries than any woman with sizeable thighs should. And after a week of nothing but candlelight and moonlight, she’d probably have a squint for the rest of her life.

And all she’d found in her quest for love was the dooming certainty that she didn’t have a freaking clue what love really was.

Some dates had been light, flirtatious and superficial. Those days were comfortable. Fun. But then other days his eyes seemed to bore into her, and their talks would peel back every layer, delving deep until she felt like she’d found a part of herself with him she’d never even known existed. He’d exposed every piece of her soul for his inspection and offered his own up as well, but no matter how close to him she got, Biz couldn’t let herself
feel
for him.

Attraction wasn’t a problem. He could turn her to mush with a look, but that wasn’t gonna cut it. She was too aware of the deadline—emphasis on
dead
—only three days away. It would shatter her to lose him, but the possibility was terrifyingly real.

Selflessness of true love.
Was that the problem? She was still thinking of things in terms of herself. It would shatter
her
to lose him. But hadn’t she found the spell when she finally wasn’t acting only for herself anymore? For once it hadn’t been about her guilt or her culpability, but his life. When it was about him, the books gave her the answer.

But was selflessness even love? The couples she matched up didn’t efface themselves to be with one another, they didn’t disappear into the relationship or lose themselves. Did she just need to care about him more than her own guilt? She did, but how would she know if that was enough.

How could she tell? She was freaking out, trying to gauge precisely how in love she was, which sort of took the fun out of the whole experience.

She’d been tempted to tell him about the spell, but she’d let a dozen opportunities to spill all slide by. He thought they were dating. Enjoying each other. That she was slowly working through her issues with her past and coming to trust him.

She told herself she was waiting for the right time, but the truth was she was terrified of what he would say right after she told him about the condition on the spell.
Do you love me?

The thought of him asking her that made her sick, for reasons she didn’t want to examine too closely. Was it because she would have to say no?

Or because, if she was honest, she’d find herself saying yes? And there was no taking back a yes.

He hadn’t pressured her, though his balls had to be turning a nice navy color after the way she kept slamming on the brakes whenever things got too heated.

She didn’t know why she was so damn scared of sleeping with him. She hadn’t slept with Tony and that hadn’t saved him.

She wanted to. There was no question about that. Her hormones were singing “Touch-a, Touch-a, Touch-a, Touch Me”
from
Rocky Horror
whenever she even thought about him. And sex released all sorts of chemicals in the brain, right? Dopamine and oxytocin or something that made you feel like you’re in love.

She knew love was more than sex, but it couldn’t hurt her cause. Unless it was awful. She couldn’t imagine it being awful, but what if it didn’t live up to her expectations? What if their chemistry fizzled or it was awkward and uncomfortable?

She wasn’t sure if she was more scared that she would lose even the progress she’d gained if they were awful in bed together, or that it would be perfect and she would lose the little piece of herself she’d been holding apart from him, keeping safe for herself as a security measure.

Biz flipped the closed sign over on the door and rushed upstairs to change. She couldn’t play it safe anymore. She’d been preaching it to Mark ever since they met. Be open to opportunities. Take a leap. It was past time she took a risk of her own.

When a tentative knock tapped on his bedroom door at four in the afternoon on February 11th, Mark figured it was probably Mrs. Kent popping by to make sure he had everything he needed in case the power went out as everyone was predicting around town. He was completely unprepared to see Biz standing in the hallway wearing a long red raincoat still dripping from her run across the street in the storm.

“What—?”

She silently held one finger to her lips, her dark eyes sparkling with mischief and something even more promising. She slipped past him into the room and turned to face him as he quietly shut the door and leaned back against it. She fiddled with the lapels of her coat, the nervous gesture a contrast to the confident tilt of her chin.

“I’ve been thinking,” she said, keeping her voice down so they wouldn’t be heard through the thin walls. “No more playing it safe.”

Her coat hit the floor, and so did Mark’s jaw. Beneath the red slicker she wore a silky black negligee that did interesting things to his blood pressure. Her hair curled loose around her shoulders, but for once it wasn’t the first thing he wanted to get his hands on. Every inch of her skin beckoned him. He couldn’t decide what he wanted to touch first.

“I’m really hoping this means we’ve decided to forego the whole patience route.”

Biz smiled, and the sin in that smile went straight to his libido. “I’m leaping.”

There is a God.

Mark crossed the room in two strides. He shoved his hands through her hair and angled her head back for his kiss. She made a small sound in her throat and leaned into him.

He tipped her back onto the crocheted coverlet on the bed. Never again would he think of this fluffy, frilly room as emasculating. With Biz soft and eager beneath him, he was a king.

Rain lashed against the windows, wind rattling the panes, and the lights flickered, but Mark couldn’t have cared less. He only heard the whisper of her sigh as she arched beneath his hands, the soft gasp as they came together and the low words he murmured in her ear as the storm broke on them.

“Do you always do that?”

“Those are the words every man dreams of hearing immediately after sex.”

Biz squirmed around until she could prop herself up on Mark’s chest. His head lolled back on the fringed pillow, his eyes closed and his expression the unique mixture of satiation and rigor mortis that overcame men after sex.

Biz still felt the delicious aftershocks of her orgasm rippling through her limbs, but her mind couldn’t slow down enough to slip into lazy oblivion. He’d said it. The L word.