In Love With a Haunted House (Contemporary Romance) (2 page)

Blake spotted the road that he was supposed to turn on, hooked a finger around the truck’s turn signal and made the curve. The old truck rattled and groaned as he did so and he wondered, a trifle uneasily, if the entire rear end was about to fall out from under the damn thing. It would not surprise him at all.

The street was a surprisingly wide avenue, sidewalks on each side were gray ribbons interrupting lush green lawns, many of them with fanciful arrangements of flowers and even fountains.

Most of the houses on the street were recorded in the historical preservation society’s register. Some of them were small, almost boxy, while others were large two- and three- storied affairs. He spotted two Greek Revival houses complete with Doric columns, and a tiny little Cape Cod style cottage that was so out of place it drew the eye, stealing its neighbors’ thunder quite effectively.

None of the houses, however, could hold a candle to Gray Oaks. He pulled into the tree-lined driveway and cut the engine. He sat back in the seat, surveying the house before him, and a smile curved his full lips.

Gray Oaks had been built in the 1850s by a former sea captain turned farmer. At one time its grounds had taken up over 400 acres but now only a single acre remained. Still, a house sitting on an acre in the middle of the city was hard to find. One with a history like the history that Gray Oaks boasted was nearly impossible to find.

Blake swung his lean body out of the truck. His jeans clung to his long muscled legs and tight narrow waist. His T-shirt showed the width of his chest and the wiry lean muscles in his arms. He tilted his trim frame against the hot truck and leaned his face back to the sun.

This was his house. He was going to buy it even if it killed him, and nobody was going to stop him from doing it.

Mallory, pulling into the driveway of her own house next door to Gray Oaks, saw the good-looking man leaning against the truck over at Gray Oaks. Assuming he was the real estate agent, she cut off her own engine and got out of her car. Her mother was not home from work yet and while the ride down from Chicago had been long and really boring, it had not been excessively tiring so she decided to go over and speak to the man.

As she got closer she could tell that her initial impression had been right, he was good-looking and he got even more good-looking with every step. The sun, coming through the trees, placed bright lemony dapples of light on his face, emphasizing the good bone structure beneath his tanned skin.

“Hello.”

Blake’s light blue eyes flew open and he jerked away from the truck like he’d been shot. For a single moment his heart jackhammered against his chest walls as he remembered all the old stories about the house being haunted. It only took a second for him to realize that this woman facing him was flesh and blood. And what flesh and blood! She was utterly beautiful, despite the dark shadows below her eyes and the drooping of her shoulders.

“I didn’t mean to startle you, I’m sorry.” She had a beautiful contralto voice: low and almost smoky. It reminded him of the voice of an old-time jazz singer, he could listen to her talk for hours. “I was pulling up and I saw you over here so I thought I would come over and introduce myself. I’m Mallory.”

She tilted her head as she spoke, and his eyes followed that movement to see the car parked in the driveway of the house next door. So, she was his new neighbor or she would be as soon as he finished buying the house. That was yet another selling point.

He extended a hand to her and Mallory took it. She could feel the calluses on his fingertips and palms, the strength within his grip, and a blush heated her face. She became tongue-tied for a moment and couldn’t think of what to say. When she finally did manage to stutter something out it was, “I’m really looking forward to living here at Gray Oaks.”

His gaze sharpened. His grip also tightened, his head tilted to one side. A rich, warm baritone voice came out of his mouth as he asked, “What are you talking about? I’m buying this house.”

Mallory blinked several times. “No, no. I thought you were the real estate agent, that’s why I came over here to say hello. Who are you?”

“I’m Blake Hunter.”

He said that like she should recognize his name. For some reason that irritated her a little. “And?”

“And I’m buying this house. I’m waiting for the real estate agent now.”

“That’s impossible! I drove all the way here from Chicago to meet the agent today.”

“It might be a little hard to live in this house if you live in Chicago.”

Mallory glared at him. How could a man be so handsome and yet so irritating? And how dare that agent set up two appointments in the same day? The least she could have done was tell Mallory that she would have other people looking at the house! She yanked her hand away from his and said, “I’m moving home.”

“Well, I hope you have a secondary choice. I’m not giving up this house.”

“Who says you’ll get it?”

Blake said, “Listen, I think we’re getting off on the wrong foot here. I’m just as upset as you are about this double booking of appointments. It’s just bad business but then again, given the fact that a house like this hasn’t been on the market in, I don’t know, a dozen years or more, I can see why she did it.”

Mallory asked, “You aren’t from here, are you?”

Blake grimaced. He’d heard that a lot since he’d first come to Golden. “No, I’m originally from Atlanta.”

Mallory nodded. “I should’ve known, not that you’re not from here but that Louise would pull a stunt like this. You should have known her in high school—she double charged for the candy bars all of us on the cheerleading team were supposed to sell to raise money for a competition and pocketed the extra profit.”

That amused Blake so much that he had to suppress a grin. “She sounds enterprising.”

Mallory had to laugh at that even though she didn’t want to. “That’s one way to put it, yes. So if you aren’t from here how did you hear about Gray Oaks being for sale?”

His face closed like a fist. All expression left it and she could tell she had asked the question that he was not going to answer. When he spoke his tone was completely impassive. “I found it on a search engine.”

He was lying! But why? Before Mallory could try to make sense of that, Louise’s sporty little red convertible pulled up at the curb. She climbed out of the car and Blake let out a whistle. “Do you think we should go give her a hand?”

“My mom says she eats too much ice cream.” Now why had she said that? Maybe because as soon as she had seen Blake looking at Louise she had been smitten by jealousy although she was not sure why. She did not even know the guy.

“Thanks for telling me. I was going to try to win her over by asking her when she was due.” The smile lurking around the corners of his mouth made him even more attractive. Mallory’s heart gave a strange little flutter; one that she tried to dismiss as gas from the chili dog she’d eaten from a gas station on her way into town.

“She’s due in three weeks. Don’t let her use that to jack up the price on you. She will if she thinks she can.”

“Are you conceding defeat?”

She gave him a smile through clenched teeth. “No, I’m giving you a fighting chance.”

“I appreciate it.”

“I’m sure you do.”

Louise’s obviously pregnant body was covered head to toe in pastel linen that looked like it was stretched to the breaking point. She wore a giant floppy hat to shade her pale face and she waved at them merrily as she tripped along from the sidewalk to the driveway in her sensible little flat ballet shoes.

As she came abreast of them she cried out, “Dear heavens, it is hotter than the hinges of hell! We should get inside before we all melt!” She gave Blake an appraising stare, then let her eyes run over Mallory so quickly that there was no doubt in Mallory’s mind she had just been dismissed.

Blake immediately took Louise’s arm, tossing Mallory a nasty little wink as he did so. Mallory would have stomped her foot in sheer frustration if she had not known exactly how childish that would look. She wound up falling behind them as they went up the flagstone walk and onto the wide and gracious front porch.

Louise kept up a steady stream of chatter, pointing out obvious things such as the porch, the long and gracious windows and the sturdy oak of the front door as they went in. Once in the foyer, Louise’s babble became even more annoying and Mallory would have liked to wander off alone but she was afraid to. There was no telling what this charming stranger might get up to with Louise while she was out of sight. Not that it looked like Louise could get up to much; it looked as if she would barely be able get from the living room to the large dining room, past it and then to the kitchen without passing out or giving birth.

The staircase ran off the foyer, arcing gracefully in an almost semicircle pattern before it attached to a landing which ran down the entire length of the second floor. Louise paused at the staircase, one hand on the banister and both feet on the floor below.

“Sorry, kids, I’m afraid this is as far as I can go. You will have to show yourselves the upstairs but be warned, it’s a bit of a mess.”

The whole house was a bit of a mess and that was an understatement. Many of the floors were gouged, the hardwood broken and splintered. The wallpaper had peeled away from the walls and had never been repaired. Some of the crown molding was broken and the stairs looked decidedly rickety.

The kitchen had been orderly, but the appliances were all practically ancient and of a revolting avocado green color that had made Mallory jerk backwards as if she were a vampire suddenly threatened with sunlight. Blake had seen that and given her a bright tooth-baring grin that was almost frightening in its whiteness.

“Not a fan of bile, I take it?”

Her glare would have melted lesser men but Blake was immune, it seemed. He was also not a gentleman. He looked at the stairs and back at her and said, “Ladies first.”

“Are you hoping to get a good look at my bottom or are you hoping I’ll just crash through a stair and save you the trouble and expense of outbidding me?”

Louise gasped at Mallory’s words but Blake merely grinned. “I’ll take whatever I can get.”

His reply left her flummoxed. He was the most impossible man! “You go first.”

He bounded up the stairs and grinned down at her from a landing. Where was a falling chandelier when she needed one? She went up the stairs a lot more slowly, testing each one to make sure it would hold her weight even though she knew he was watching, and amused by her reluctance.

The upstairs was a mess. Dust had collected in every corner and the floors, while not as seriously damaged as they were downstairs, needed a good cleaning and some fresh coatings of polyurethane.

The bedrooms were furnished and the furnishings were good but somewhat worn out. One bedroom made Mallory stop and stare. This had to be Ms. Lewis’s room: the bed was high and covered with a vast array of hand-sewn quilts. The pictures on the walls all showed a handsome man captured in black-and-white and sepia tones, his uniform fitting his trim and lean body perfectly.

Was this the man that had died and left her all alone? The story was that she had never gotten over her fiancé’s tragic death and had pined away for him for the rest of her life. Was that true? Could someone love someone else so much that everything just sort of stopped in their own lives after their beloved died?

“Yes, that was exactly how it was. When he died over there in the war everything just stopped here, like a clock whose hands had gotten stuck.”

Mallory’s head jerked around. Had she just heard someone speak? She looked around, trying to see if there was a curtain flipping against a wall or anything else that could have made a sound that would have been similar to a voice speaking, but she saw nothing.

How silly of her, she was letting old ghost stories bother her. Well, those and this hunk of a man whose jeans were currently stretched nice and tight over his firm round buttocks as he bent to inspect a baseboard. It should be illegal for a man to wear jeans that tight! Or to have a butt like that, he was probably one of those guys that spent four hours a day in the gym and four more in front of his mirror. That uncharitable thought made her instantly ashamed. He wanted the same house she wanted,
that was no reason to be so unkind.