Move Me (9 page)

Tired of the war in her brain and between her
legs - because, really, who wouldn’t crave a repeat of their
kitchen tryst? - she called Susi from her cell phone. The general
store must have been open later than she remembered. Her call went
straight to voicemail.

Crap
, she thought at the loss of that
distraction.

She tried doing laundry down in the dank
cellar, only to discover the washer’s tub wouldn’t fill with water.
To her layman’s eye, the hoses and spigots were attached and turned
correctly. Unfortunately, because the basement wasn’t finished
beyond stone walls and a cement floor, the process of checking the
connections covered her in cobwebs and grime.

“Crap,” she repeated, looking down at
herself. These were the last pair of jeans she’d packed. Now she
truly needed the machine to work. She’d have to call John Feeney
whether she wanted to or not.

“You could call a real plumber,” she
muttered, certain she’d seen an ancient yellow pages in the
kitchen.

A cold draft whooshed through the cellar,
strong enough to stir Belle’s ponytail. The air sounded as if it
were whispering.

Belle
, she thought it said.
Listen
.

The cellar’s only light bulb buzzed and went
out.

“Damn it,” she snapped, spinning
instinctively. She saw nothing behind her but darkness. The cellar
was pitch black without the light, and she’d never find the fuse
box. Not that this mattered. The bulb had sounded as if it died,
not as if she needed to flip a breaker the other way.

The draft whooshed again, bungieing her heart
up into her throat. Belle pressed her hand to the spot as a shiver
crawled up her spine. Was that a glow over there, or were her eyes
seeing afterimages in the dark? She had a powerful impulse to call
for John.

No
, she told herself firmly.
You’re
not
that big a ninny
.

In addition to which, he wasn’t around to
hear.

Teeth gritted, body broken out in a chilly
sweat, Belle stuck her arms out like a zombie and fumbled back to
the stairs. Though it seemed to take an eon to bump through the
basement junk, she doubted more than five minutes passed before she
emerged into the kitchen. The lights were on there, suggesting
she’d been right about the fuse. Her nerves calmed under the
brightness. Old houses were drafty. That’s all she’d heard down
there.

She considered looking for a flashlight so
she could replace the bulb, then decided to wait until daylight.
Even non-ninnies were allowed some slack. With more force of will
than tranquility, Belle fixed herself another grilled cheese
dinner, ate four Oreos, and checked email on her cell phone.

Her assistant at Trusty Maids seemed to have
everything in hand, so these entertainments didn’t occupy her long.
Her serial killer book appealed to her even less than the night
before.

Tired in spite of her scare, she readied
herself for bed. She was coming out of the bathroom when she
noticed the door to Uncle Lucky’s room was ajar. She was sure she’d
shut it. His bedroom was colder than the others, and she hadn’t
wanted to waste the heat.

Sighing, she wondered if she needed to wedge
it closed. She peered inside. The landing light was on, but the
room itself was dark. Uncle Lucky’s old iron bed put her in mind of
TV shows about haunted prisons, so she tried not to look at it. The
moon cast wiggling branch shadows on the floor. This drew her gaze
to the windows, which was when she saw one of them was open a
crack.

“Well, hell,” she swore, stalking across the
threadbare area rug. No wonder it was cold in here. John must have
forgotten to turn the lock thingie on the sash. Country folk were
notoriously lax about safety.

She’d tugged the window fully down and had
started securing it when a hunched-over figure skulked into the
yard below. Goose bumps rippled across her shoulders. Her cell
phone was in the kitchen. She had to call 911. How long would help
take to get here? Kingaken had a sheriff, but no resident police.
They borrowed those from the next county.

“Crap, crap, crap,” she whispered beneath her
breath. Was it worth running around the house locking doors? Would
any lock in the place keep out a serious intruder?

The man was doing something at the boarded-up
door to her uncle’s shack. Okay, maybe not so boarded up. The door
swung open without trouble, the nails on the end of the two by
fours apparently not attached. Clearly about to enter, the intruder
glanced toward the bright half moon. Belle’s mouth fell open. She
recognized who it was. John Feeney was breaking into her
property!

Anger surged into her as strongly as fear
had. What the hell was he doing? And how dare he scare her that
way! Forgetting her plan to call 911, Belle grabbed Uncle Lucky’s
Louisville Slugger and went to handle this herself.

~

The last thing Dubhghall expected was for
someone to bang their fist on the workshed door. He’d been sitting
on the couch, hugging a cushion to him in an attempt to stop
shivering from his long tramp around the woods. Though he could
have built a fire out there, he hadn’t wanted to be spotted.
Kingaken’s wild places weren’t as isolated as he was used to. It
was a sign of his demoralization that Belle’s angry voice perked
him up.

“John Feeney!” she shouted. “Get your ass out
here and explain yourself, or I swear I will use this bat on
you.”

He pushed up groaning and went to her.
Thankfully, though she seemed plenty mad, she wasn’t holding the
bat like she meant to swing. “Hey, Belle,” he said.

“Don’t
Hey, Belle
me. What the hell do
you think you’re doing? This is my house.”

Avoiding a lie was harder when someone asked
a direct question. “I can’t go home,” he said truthfully.

“You can’t stay here,” she retorted. “It’s a
shed.”

Since a fraction of the furious wind seemed
to have left her sails, he continued in the same vein. “I like
being close to you. I prefer it to going home.”

The truth of Dubhghall’s words surprised him.
If he’d been lying, not only would it have temporarily queered his
mojo, but a deception-induced migraine would now be splitting his
skull. Instead, his head felt a little clearer, as if a veil had
been peeled away.

Belle looked surprised for her own
reasons.

“Okay, that’s creepy,” she said, much of the
heat drained out of her tone. “Plus, it’s too frakking cold to be
playing stalker. You don’t even have a coat.”

Belle planted the end of the bat in the
recovering grass. She didn’t seem afraid of him, but more as if she
didn’t know how to handle her sympathy.

“You could invite me in,” he suggested
hopefully.

“You could go home!”

Dubhghall considered how to counter this
argument. Strictly speaking, she thought he could. “You’ve no idea
how empty a house feels without its family.”

“Honestly?” she huffed, her temper suddenly
hot again. “I don’t know about empty houses? How about when the
family’s still living in it, but they check out on you anyway? My
parents lost Danny, and I lost them. Not that they were really
there for me before. They just gave up pretending once he was gone.
Mourning is a great excuse for some people to be assholes.”

He suspected she’d never said this out loud
before. She trembled with the force of her pent-up grief and
resentment. His heart twisted unexpectedly in his chest. How would
he have borne it if his parents had treated him that way?

“Belle,” he said softly.

“Hell. I shouldn’t be ...” She swiped a track
of moisture from one cheek. “Look, I know you’re hurting on account
of your wife and kids. I’m certainly not trying to call you an
asshole. The thing is, you can’t let yourself go off the deep end
this way. Acting crazy never made anyone saner.”

He smiled, because the answer was so
her
. She wouldn’t let herself fall apart, no matter what the
people around her did.

“I’m serious,” she said. “Get yourself back
on a routine. As terrible as you’re feeling, you can survive more
than you think.”

Fondness welled up inside him, warming him
better than a bonfire. He was about to hug her - whether or not
that was a smart idea - when he saw a glow coalescing in the dark
behind her.

Shit
, he thought with great energy.
This wasn’t a good time for Uncle Lucky to pay a call.

To his astonishment, the ghost was grinning
at him.

~

Belle steeled herself against feeling any
sorrier for John Feeney. Go down that road and before she knew it,
him claiming he’d rather be close to her than go home would start
sounding flattering. How likely was it to be true anyway? She was
no fairy princess spun out of gossamer. She stood on her own two
feet. Men didn’t fall for women like her with that kind of
intensity.

She was reminding herself this was cause to
be grateful when John’s eyes widened.

“No,” he said, low and tight. “This isn’t a
good time.”

The direction of his gaze said he wasn’t
speaking to her. She turned, expecting who knew what. An accomplice
to his break-in? Had this been a crime after all? The blurry ball
of light that hung in the air confused her. At first, the hovering
sphere was small, like a spirit light from a photograph. Belle told
herself she was seeing things even as the hairs on her arms stood
up.

The light stretched into an oblong,
brightened, and took the shape of a man.

“Hello, Belle,” it said.

If you’d asked Belle that morning, she’d have
sworn she didn’t have the reaction in her. In her or no, she let
out a full-on horror movie scream.

She stumbled backward, her legs too quivery
to work right. John caught her against his chest as she moaned in
terror.
Ninny!
the non-girly part of her accused.

“Shh,” John said, his arms surprisingly cold.
Their support was welcome all the same. “Let me take care of
this.”

“Belle,” said the ghost of her Uncle Lucky.
He’d been a handsome man in life - crazy Einstein hair aside.
Seeming grave, he tugged his cardigan straighter from the hem, a
habit she reluctantly remembered. “I’m glad you can see me. There
are things I need to say to you.”

Belle’s teeth were chattering too hard to
decline.

“You’re scaring her,” John said, his heart a
steady thump behind her. “I’m sure that’s not your intent.”

“No,” said the ghost. “But -”

“Enough,” John interrupted. “Isaiah
Bennington-Luckes, leave the earthly plane and rest for a
nonce.”

His order had the formality of a ritual. The
semi-transparent figure shuddered. “Damn it,” it said a second
before it disappeared.

For a good long moment, all Belle could do
was pant. Once she recovered, she wrenched away and slapped John
across the face - another act she’d have sworn she’d go her whole
life without performing.

“Ow,” he said, hand to cheek. “Why did you do
that?”

“I kn-now what a nonce is. If you could send
him away, why didn’t you make it forever?”

“I’m not the King of the Shades. I don’t have
the right to order him any more than I did.”

“Are you even a handyman?” she demanded.

He paused an instant too long. “I fixed your
shower, didn’t I?”

“Why were you really hiding in my shed? Are
you an undercover ghost chaser?”

“If I’m a ghost chaser, where’s my crew?”

He had a point, but Belle didn’t want to
concede it. If nothing else, what had just happened proved there
was more to John Feeney than met the eye.

What had just happened rushed back to
her.

“Oh my God,” she said as her anger ebbed and
her knees resumed shaking. “I saw a ghost.”

John caught her by the shoulders before she
fell over. “Don’t make me slap
you
,” he warned. “You’re not
the first person to see one, and you won’t be the last. As you
said, people can survive more than they believe.”

“I didn’t
want
to see one,” she said
plaintively.

He let out a cross between a laugh and a
snort, then swept her up into his arms.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“What every woman wants at a time like this.”
He must have been right, because she didn’t tell him to put her
down. He strode across the yard with her.

“I’m not inviting you stay the night.”

He opened the back porch door one-handed and
smirked at her. “I think you are, Miss Hobart. Of the two of us,
only I know a lick about shooing ghosts away.”

“You’ll stay on the couch.”

“Honestly?” he said, one dark brow arching.
“You’d sleep a wink with me as far from you as that?”

He had her, and he didn’t even know how
badly. Belle’s body went as soft as taffy as he carried her inside
and up the stairs to her room. His arms had warmed, and his eyes -
though amused - were painfully kind. She doubted another man in the
world could have made her feel safe after such a scare. They
certainly wouldn’t have tempted her to kiss them.

Belle made up her mind with surprisingly
little struggle. Just this once, she’d trust another human being to
look out for her.

~

To Belle’s annoyance, John was only panting a
little as he set her down on her bed. She was breathing harder than
he was - but not from exertion.

“There you go,” he said, looking around the
way people do when they’re in someone else’s space. The turn of his
head brought out the cords of his throat, which were long and
lickable. His profile was so beautiful it shocked. His straight-cut
nose, his full lips, his chin and his thick curled lashes all
struck her as ideal - a toasty warm perfection that demanded to be
touched.

Belle blushed when his attention returned to
her.

“Would you like some hot tea?” he offered.
“That can be calming after a shock.”