Ghosts of Boyfriends Past (3 page)

Mrs. Kent patted Mark’s arm, protecting her sale. “The internet works quite well, I assure you. Mr. Bloom is my other guest at the Shoreview. Perhaps you could have breakfast with him. Of course, I keep the dining room open from seven until nine, so if you chose to avoid him, that would be possible as well. Though he does seem a nice sort. Quiet.”

“It’s always the quiet ones,” Biz mumbled, and Mark had to bite back a smile.

He gently untangled Mrs. Kent from his arm. “I’m sure he’s a lovely breakfast companion.”

“I’d best go fix the router-thingamawhatsit. Just you pop across the street whenever you’re done here, Mr. Ellison. I’ll have your room all ready for you.”

Biz bounded off her stool. “Mrs. Kent, he won’t be staying.”

Mark spoke to Mrs. Kent, but he didn’t take his eyes off Biz. “I’ll check in this afternoon.”

The B&B proprietress giggled as if he and Biz were a fabulous comedy routine, fluttered her hummingbird hands and jangled out the door, leaving him once again with the Black Widow who was becoming more fascinating the more she protested.

She met his gaze, her own openly pleading. “Please just go, Mr. Ellison. This is a bad time for me.” She’d obviously tried to be rigid and firm, but it didn’t fit her any better than the frumpy sweater she was hiding inside.

“I can come back later. Let me take you to lunch. Or better yet, dinner.”

“No! God, no. I meant this time of year. We can’t eat together. Are you suicidal or something?”

“You’re that bad a cook?”

“What?”

“It was a joke. There’s got to be a decent restaurant somewhere on this island. Or was it your big jealous linebacker boyfriend you were warning me about?”

“I’m not seeing anyone.” She winced. He smiled.

“So what’s the harm? It’s only dinner.”

“That’s how it always starts.”

“Do you think you’re jinxed? Like if you start seeing someone he’ll…” He trailed off, trying to think of a delicate way to say
keel over
.

“Yep. Jinxed. Especially on Valentine’s Day. So you should leave. Now.”

“What if I promised to leave town only if you have dinner with me tonight?”

Biz’s mouth dropped open. “I— Are you trying to blackmail me into going out with you?”

He grinned. “Is it working?”

“
Why
?” she yelped.

“You intrigue me.” He smiled another trust-me-on-this smile.

Biz’s eyes narrowed. “This is all just a ploy to get a story, isn’t it? You’re good. I’ll give you that. And I’ll give you an interview. An
interview
, not a date. No dinner. No eating together at all. Someplace professional. And public.”

“How about here? Now?”

“No, I… Later. I have to man the shop.” She waved at the deserted aisles.
Bustling downtown Parish
. “I close at two tomorrow. You can come by then.”

Mark slathered charm onto his next smile. “I’ll be here. Wild horses couldn’t drag me away.”

Biz groaned. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

Chapter Three—With Friends Like These Who Needs Enemas

When the door closed behind the reporter with a death wish, Biz somehow resisted the urge to curl into the fetal position and sob, though she did sink onto her stool and drop her forehead to the counter with a thunk.

Not another ghost. Anything but that.

Biz gave the counter a couple more thumps for good measure. It was oddly cathartic, the physical act of banging her head against something. Especially after the conversation she’d just had.

So she had an interview with a reporter who wanted to put all her secrets on display. It could be worse. At least it wasn’t dinner.

Dinner meant dating and dating meant death. An innocent little dinner, a few hours of cozy conversation, and next thing she knew she was at another funeral with another mountain of guilt heaped on top of her.
No, thank you
.

No men. Until Biz knew for sure she’d broken the curse, she had her vow of eternal chastity and her battery-operated boyfriend to keep her warm at night.

And the ghosts.

Charms tinkled against one another in an upward cascade like a question asked. A soft hand patted her gently on the back. If she looked up, she knew she’d see Paul, peering at her with his own version of concern, but she didn’t want to look up. She didn’t want to deal with the ghosts at all. For five minutes she just wanted to be completely, utterly alone.

“I’m fine, guys,” she said without lifting her forehead from the countertop. “Go on upstairs. I’ll be up in a minute.”

She felt them move away. With her eyes closed, the air shifting around her could have been displaced by actual bodies. She could have been surrounded by real men. It was so tempting, sometimes, to live her life with her eyes closed.

But the ostrich approach wasn’t going to make the reporter go away.

What was she supposed to tell him? Admit the truth? Or some sterilized version of it?
Jinxed
was probably better than
I’m a witch and I cursed myself and now my ex-boyfriends are haunting me
on the how-crazy-are-you scale.

But the odds were good her brain was going to short-circuit the second Mark walked into the room tomorrow.

She certainly hadn’t been able to think straight today. Panic and the yummy pheromone cloud he exuded had combined to turn her into a blithering idiot. She’d needed cool-headed strategy and all she could think was
Evict the dimples!
Which was really not as helpful as one might hope.

God, why hadn’t he just left? Why had he
flirted
like a freaking lemming sprinting toward the nearest cliff?

But she knew why. The spell. She wasn’t a sex goddess. She was disorganized and had ten stubborn pounds she could never get rid of adding an extra layer of padding. Not that the two were related. But she wasn’t exactly a catch. So why was this hunk of burning investigative reporting willing to blackmail her into a date?

Though maybe it was the scent of a story he was chasing.
Please let it be the story.
If he was only a reporter, he might survive the month. She just had to make up some lies to tell him tomorrow at the interview.

Provided the curse hasn’t already struck him dead.

Biz groaned. This was a bad idea. She shouldn’t be spending any more time with him. He might as well have had
Biz’s Next Victim
tattooed on his forehead.

She should call him back. Tell him no. Be firm. Kick him off the island. Maybe see if the boys could scare the bejeezus out of him.

But before she could do anything, the bells over the door jangled again. Biz lifted her head off the counter and watched as her best friend shouldered open the door with both arms full of what looked like a large plastic purple pumpkin.

“Morning, Bizby,” Gillian called cheerfully, trying—and failing—to flip her blonde Charlie’s Angels bangs out of her eyes with a toss of her head.

Biz waved half-heartedly, still preoccupied with the Reporter of Doom. “I can’t handle another ghost on my conscience. I honestly can’t.”

Gillian hefted the pumpkin thing up onto the only open counter space in the shop and huffed her bangs out of her eyes. “Sometimes I forget how odd you are. And then you speak.”

“Says the woman with the giant purple pumpkin.”

Though, seeing as it was Gillian and this was Parish Island, the sight of a woman carting around a swollen purple gourd in the middle of January didn’t even tweak Biz’s finely honed weirdness radar.

“It isn’t a pumpkin. It’s a heart. I need to store it in here until Valentine’s so Dave doesn’t see it.” Gillian looked at her for the first time since swanning through the door. “Jeez, Biz, what are you wearing? Just looking at you is depressing.”

“Thank you. That isn’t a heart and it is not staying here.”

Gilly’s eyelashes began to bat at Mach two. Dr. Gillian Hale, M.D., Ph.D. pain in the ass, was a freaking genius, but she’d learned early that she could get away with more by being the prettiest girl on the island than she could by being the smartest one. Flirtation was still her first line of attack, even on people experience had shown weren’t susceptible to her charms. “Please, Bizby?” she purred, as her eyelashes worked up a gale-force wind.

“Stop that. Or I won’t tell you about the new hunk in town.”

Gillian’s eyelashes screeched to a halt. “New hunk?” A flash of interest crossed her face before her expression fell. “God’s testicles, Bizby, did you go all spastic on him? I’ve seen you around good-looking men. It ain’t pretty.”

“I didn’t spaz out.”
Much
. “He wanted to interview me.”

“You?
Why
?”

“See, this is why we’re friends. Your faith in me warms the cockles of my heart.”

“We’ll discuss warming up your cockles later. Tell me about the stud. Is
interview
some new slang I haven’t heard about?”

Biz grinned. God bless Gilly’s one-track mind. Her feeling of impending doom was gradually fading in Gillian’s presence. She felt almost cheerful. “Dave would be appalled by your prurient interest in another man.”

“Dave would be stymied by the use of the word
prurient
. And don’t change the subject. I love my hubby and I would never look at another man, blah blah blah. Now back to the stud. I want details.”

“He’s a reporter from Raleigh who wants me to share my feelings about having the worst Valentine’s luck in the history of mankind.”

Gillian drew herself up to her full five eleven, her expression darkening. “I hope you told him where to shove it. What kind of scumsucker makes a living exploiting other people’s grief? Just point me in his direction and I’ll kick the living shit out of him.”

“Doesn’t beating a reporter bloody violate your Hippocratic oath or something?”

“There’s a loophole for the press and people who harass my friends.”

“Handy loophole. And while I appreciate the sentiment, I think instead I’ll just try avoiding him. That seems less likely to result in assault charges.”

Gillian shrugged. “The offer stands. So you aren’t going to talk to him?”

Biz thought that one over. She was tempted to hide in her house like a hermit for the next three weeks, but Mark Ellison didn’t seem like the kind of man who gave up easily. But how could she shoo him off without telling him anything? The truth was absolutely out of the question, but he flustered her so much she wasn’t able to come up with good lies when he was standing there in front of her looking like an all-you-can-eat manflesh buffet.

She needed a plan. A script to follow.

He was too easy to talk to. There were moments when she’d found words just spilling right out of her mouth with no direction from her. Almost as if she was compelled to confide in him. That was dangerous enough with people who’d known her all her life and accepted her idiosyncrasies. With a reporter from the city, it reached a whole new level of stupid.

“Biz? Earth to Bizby. Come in, Bizby.”

Biz blinked and Gillian grinned.

“There you are. So are you talking to this reporter or what?”

“I told him I’d meet him here tomorrow at two.” Biz groaned, slumping on her stool. “I just wish I knew what he expects me to say.”

Not knowing made it harder to lie effectively. The best lies, she’d discovered in her lifetime of covering up her magic touch, were the ones that played on the expectations of the listener. But she had no idea what Mark Ellison wanted from her.

“You need to know what he knows,” Gillian agreed, her baby blues narrowing shrewdly. “What you need are spies. I think it’s time to call in the cavalry, Bizby.”

“I don’t have a cavalry.”

“Babe, this whole island is your cavalry. We’ll sic the town gossips on him. Mrs. Kent, Mrs. Whittaker… The poor bastard won’t know what hit him. Give me twenty-four hours and you’ll know exactly what he wants,
and
we’ll spin him around so much he won’t know which way is up. It’s almost cruel and unusual.” Gilly’s eyes filled with unholy glee. “I like it.”

Biz’s conscience squirmed at the idea of unleashing the gossip hounds on Mark Ellison and his dimples. “I don’t know, Gilly…”

“He deserves it. He’s the one who came out here to interrogate a perfectly innocent woman and stir up all your old feelings and stuff.”

Biz smiled in spite of herself at Gillian’s description of her
feelings and stuff
. Her best friend was a walking encyclopedia of medical knowledge, but her bedside manner left something to be desired. She never seemed to understand the concepts of self-doubt or regret. Biz was the expert on those.

“You won’t have to do a thing,” Gillian assured her when she couldn’t come up with another protest fast enough. “Leave it all to me.” She spun on her heel, charging off to storm the fourth estate.

“Gilly! You forgot your pumpkin thing.”

She paused at the door. “I didn’t forget it. You’re keeping it for me, because you’re my friend and you love me and you have plenty of space in this big old house. And it’s a
heart
. With ventricles and everything. Dave’s gonna love it. The chambers all have little compartments so we can dissect it together on Valentine’s.”

Biz studied the purple mass. Now she could see that it was, disturbingly, an enormous swollen replica of a human heart. In purple plastic. “Ew.”

Gilly shrugged. “One woman’s romance is another woman’s…”

“Creepy plastic nightmare?” Though she had to admit, Dave would probably love it. The Drs. Hale shared a macabre sense of romance.

“Whatever keeps the passion alive, Bizby. That’s my motto. Gotta run if I’m going to psychologically disembowel this reporter before my day shift starts. Thanks so much for holding on to my heart for me.” She waved cheerfully and disappeared in another jangle of bells.

Biz felt a bit like she’d just been flattened by a steamroller—which wasn’t unusual after a visit from Gillian. She eyed the Purple Gourd of Lovin’ dubiously. She couldn’t very well leave it sitting there on the counter. It would terrify her customers.

Not that she had much in the way of customers this time of year. Even with the drastically reduced winter hours, it almost wasn’t worth opening the shop between November and March. She used to get through the slow months by building up holiday enthusiasm—decking the halls for Christmas in November and December, then replacing the wreaths and candy canes with hearts and flowers to amp up for Valentine’s Day all through January and February.