Ghosts of Boyfriends Past (7 page)

“Not so much fun when you’re the one answering the questions, is it?”

“As a matter of fact, I enjoyed myself thoroughly. Fascinating town you’ve got here. You wouldn’t believe some of the things I was asked…let alone some of the things I was told.”

Nervousness filled her stomach with lead-winged butterflies.

“Ghosts, witches. It’s amazing what people believe, isn’t it?”

Oh, crud.
He knew
. Somehow he knew everything. “You don’t believe in ghosts?” she asked, her voice sounding choked and unnatural, even to her own ears.

“
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio…
” He grinned. “I believe in possibilities, but the spirit of loved ones living on after their death seems more like a coping mechanism than truth to me. Like all those suckers who pay out the nose so some medium can reconnect them with their dead father one last time. It’s wishful thinking.”

Relief flooded her. He couldn’t know. You couldn’t know something if you didn’t believe it existed.

She should have just shut up and let it go at that, but his words were a challenge to her world view, and in her relief she couldn’t keep quiet. “You don’t believe their father’s spirit is still out there, watching over them?”

“It’s not the father’s spirit I don’t believe in. It’s the medium. If Daddy was really watching over you, he’d keep you away from conmen like that.”

“So what if there were unexplained events that showed
Daddy
was looking after his kids? A stray breeze that opens a door when your arms are full or a door you’re sure you locked being open when you’ve forgotten your keys? Maybe a radio stuck on his favorite station?”
Or a chef preparing all your meals for you for a year after his death…
“How would you explain that?”

“Maybe it’s coincidence. Hell, maybe it is Daddy. I just think we’re too eager to read into those events what we want to see in them.”

“Such a cynic.”

“Such a realist.” He grinned, suddenly intimately close again. “What do you believe, Biz?”

A warning voice told her not to talk to him, to walk away and leave him with his rationalizations, but she’d never been very good at listening to warning voices. “If you were chasing down a story and you kept hearing a certain rumor over and over and over again, would you start to believe there might be some truth in it?”

He shrugged. “I would believe that was what people believed, but popular opinion and fact diverge all the time.”

“Not if it’s history. History
is
popular opinion.” She shook her head. “I’m explaining it wrong. Take the flood. Noah.”

“The Bible guy?”

“Yeah, but he wasn’t just the Bible guy. Pretty much every culture that existed at that time had some version of the flood story. Not necessarily with the whole two-by-two bit, but the story was universal.”

“Yeah, antediluvian cultures are fascinating. What does this have to do with anything?”

“People from all different geographic regions came up with the same myth independent of one another. And because of that historians now believe there really was a flood. God commanding Noah to build an ark is a faith thing, but the existence of a flood is a fact.”

“Because of popular historic opinion.”

“Exactly.”

His mouth twitched, but his eyes gleamed with interest. “I still have no idea why we’re talking about this.”

“Witches.”

“Witches,” he repeated.

“The concept of magic, especially women as conduits for magic, has sprung up in countless cultures around the world since the beginning of recorded history.”

“Okay.”

“So there must be some truth in it.”

“That’s an interesting theory. Of course, it ignores the fact that superstition has always been used to cover the gaps in our scientific understanding, and women, as the non-ruling gender in most early cultures, would have been blamed for anything the men needed someone to take the fall for.”

“So if I told you I came from a long line of witches, you would tell me I only thought that because I was a victim of a superstitious patriarchal society?”

He grinned, leaning forward and getting into the challenge of the debate, when a cough from the other side of the table startled them both. Gillian smiled blandly as Biz scooted as far as she could get from Mark on the narrow bench seat.

Where had her brain gone just then? Why was she sitting here arguing with him and trying to convince him witches existed when she should be running as fast as she could in the opposite direction? Dear God, she’d practically confessed to being a witch herself.

Gillian gathered up her coat. “As much fun as it is to sit here and be ignored by you two, I really need to be getting to the clinic.”

“No!” Biz blurted then blushed when both Mark and Gillian looked askance at her. Gillian couldn’t leave her alone with Mark. Even with a chaperone, she’d practically told him her deepest darkest secrets. Who knew what she would do if they were alone together? “You said yourself the clinic is never busy on Fridays.”

“And yet I still go to work. My dedication to life-saving is an inspiration, even to myself.” She stood, gathering up her windbreaker. “And if I skip a shift, Dave’ll try to steal it back from me. You two have fun now.”

“Gillian, wait, I’ll walk with you.” Biz started to shove Mark out of the booth, but Gillian was already out the door—and probably halfway down the block.

Mark stayed immobile on her side of the booth. “Alone at last.”

Panic spiked, hard and deep. When Gillian had been there—even when she’d forgotten Gillian was there—her presence had been a buffer. Biz had been able to forget about the curse for a moment—was it really so terrible to spend time with him in a group? The curse wouldn’t react to that, would it?

But now, with the two of them alone save one adoring teenager currently hiding in the kitchen, the danger was suddenly clear and present in the front of her mind.

“I have to go. The shop. It opens.”

“In two hours. I checked out your hours. We have all the time in the world.” He smiled again—the same smile that had melted Mrs. Whittaker’s natural resistance to charmers.

The man had no survival instincts.

“But if I don’t get the shop ready, I won’t be able to open on time and then I won’t close on time and we couldn’t do our interview.” It took her about five seconds to open the shop and she wasn’t exactly a stickler for time during the winter season, but what he didn’t know might keep him alive until February fifteenth.

“Why don’t we just do the interview now? You’re here. I’m here.”

“I’m leaving. Let me out.”

He sighed, dramatically disappointed, and stood. “You’re a hard woman to figure out, Biz.” Then he flashed out another delicious smile. “I like that about you. You’re a mystery.”

“I’m not mysterious,” she insisted, collecting her things and sidling past him, careful not to touch him. “I’m boring. Ask anyone.”

“Oh, I will. You can count on that.”

Biz’s heart sank. What would he find out? She wasn’t openly
out
as a witch, but it was one of those secrets that was universally known around town—whether people really bought into it or not. She was charmed—or she had been—and now there were ghosts in her house.

“You don’t believe in ghosts,” she reminded him, clinging to her purse like a security blanket.

“Nah,” he agreed readily. “Now
aliens
on the other hand, that’s just a statistical surety.” He winked at her.
Winked
.

God, she hoped that was a joke. If he really believed in aliens, there was no telling what some of the townspeople might convince him of.

They’d always been so supportive of her, but if he started asking questions, stirring things up, they might realize that her
charms
could easily be
curses
in the wrong hands. And someone might suspect that hers were the wrong hands.

Biz didn’t know what to do. Disaster was looming, but she couldn’t see any way to avert it other than breaking the curse. Avoiding Mark Ellison wasn’t working. And telling herself she wasn’t attracted to him wasn’t a very effective method of denial.

He flashed his dimples, tipping an imaginary hat.

Biz ran.

Chapter Nine—The Dimples of Doom

Mark arrived at Charmed, I’m Sure fifteen minutes early.

And found the door locked and windows darkened.

“Dammit.” He should’ve known she’d stand him up. After the way she’d run from him this morning, she was probably halfway to Venezuela by now.

A cold breeze whipped up the street, carrying the salty scent of the ocean. Mark pounded his fist on the door, but he might as well have saved himself the bruised knuckles. He grumbled a few choice words and stepped back until he could see the upper windows. They were dark as well, but was that curtain fluttering? Was someone watching him?

Gotcha.

She wasn’t in Venezuela. She was up there, hiding behind that curtain, emanating guilt from every pore. He couldn’t see a thing, but he knew she was there just like he knew there was a story in this bizarre little town.

Mark folded his arms and directed a slow, inviting smile up at that window.
Come on down and play, little girl.

He settled in to wait, staring at the window like he could force her downstairs by dint of his will alone. Biz may look like a soft touch, but she’d proven she wasn’t an easy target. He was going to enjoy chasing down this story a lot more than he’d expected. Damn, but he loved a challenge.

Having a staring contest with a drape wasn’t the highlight of his career, but Mark didn’t let his gaze waver. He was determined to get this interview no matter what it took, but he’d have a lot more fun if he could catch her with honey. He amped up the charm on his smile.

“Are you looking for Miss Marks too?”

Mark turned at the sound of the slightly nasal voice. Mrs. Kent’s other guest stood a few feet up the sidewalk, a box of candies clutched in one hand. What was his name? Flowers? Rose?

“We had an appointment,” Mark replied, still ransacking his memory for the name.

“Oh…” The pale man seemed to shrink in on himself. “You’re seeing her then.”

Bloom. That was what Mrs. Kent had called him. Mr. Bloom. “I was supposed to see her at two, but she seems to have vanished on me. Don’t suppose you’ve seen her?”

Bloom fidgeted with the ribbon on the candy box. “Not today, no.” He bobbed his head and started across the street toward the guesthouse.

Mark turned his attention back to Biz’s upstairs window and fired up his best smile.
Come out, come out, wherever you are.

He wasn’t leaving.

Biz twisted her hands together, careful not to brush against the curtain and set it swaying again. Why wasn’t he leaving? He had to have realized by now that she’d changed her mind about the interview.

It was rude of her not to call him. Or at the very least leave him a note. But the less interaction she had with Mark Ellison the better. It was for his own good. She’d already seen far too much of him and proven, beyond doubt, that she couldn’t behave herself in his presence. Talking him into going after love, telling him witches existed…there was no telling what she’d say to him next.

No, cold turkey was best.

Though judging by the lazy smile he was aiming up at her window, he hadn’t gotten the memo. God, why was he looking at her like that?

After Paul, she’d never encouraged the men the curse caught. And yet they’d fallen for her in spite of her reservations. She couldn’t be sure how the curse picked its victims, so the only option was to avoid all contact with the masculine of the species. And Mark Ellison definitely counted as masculine.

His eyes continued to bore up at her even though there was no way he could know she was watching. Why didn’t he just leave? Was there some flaw inherent in a reporter’s genetic code that made him physiologically incapable of walking away from a dead end?

Biz was about as dead an end as he was going to find.

A sudden wind whipped through the room, twisting the drapes as a crash thrummed the lower strings of the piano. Biz spun and dropped into a crouch beneath the sill, her heart drumming. Had he seen her?

The curtains settled, the gust dying as abruptly as it had arisen. The piano’s discordant twanging faded. The windows were all closed, but she didn’t suspect for a second the wind had been natural.

“Dammit, Tony. What was that for?”

Of course, he didn’t answer. He never answered. She might as well have been imagining things and talking to herself. Being nuts would have been so much easier. For one thing, she wouldn’t spend all her time feeling guilty and helpless.

Biz sighed and dropped her head back against the hundred-year-old paneling that ran below the chair rail. Mark was still out there. She could almost feel the Dimples of Doom boring into her back through the layers of siding, plaster and oak. For whatever reason, the curse had made her into his obsession.

He would keep coming back. She’d have to face him eventually, but she couldn’t do it today. She had no idea what she would say to him. The truth? It was his life at stake, after all. If anyone had a right to know, it was him. But Biz had never told anyone the whole truth.

She closed her eyes, too tired to think straight.

She hadn’t gotten more than an hour of sleep since he’d walked into her store the day before. All night she’d dug through her grandmother’s grimoires and all this morning too. She hadn’t opened the shop for fear Mark would drop by early and catch her unawares.

Exhaustion weighed down her arms and legs. Even the muscles in her neck felt rubbery, like her head would wobble like Gumby if she tried to lift it from the wall.

Three weeks, one day and just under ten hours. And over two hundred books she hadn’t cracked yet. Her eyes burned just thinking of all that tiny print. Some of the older volumes were even handwritten. Their so-soft whispers tickled the back of her mind, where a massive headache was building.

Why did her grandmother have to be such a collector? Why had Biz cast the spell? Why didn’t magical problems ever just magically resolve themselves? Why did Mark Ellison have to have dimples, determination and an ability to laughingly adapt to every obstacle she threw at him?