Proposal (7 page)

And yet, suddenly, I felt like the luckiest girl alive.

I sank down into the sand beside him.

“Yes, Jesse de Silva,” I said, throwing my arms around his neck. “I will.”

 

You saw the proposal . . . now don't miss the wedding!

Suze and Jesse finally tie the knot in . . .

REMEMBRANCE

A Mediator Novel

Coming February 2, 2016!

Read on for a sneak peek and preorder it today!

You can take the boy out of the darkness. But you can't take the darkness out of the boy.

All Susannah Simon wants is to make a good impression at her first job since graduating from college (and since becoming engaged to Dr. Jesse de Silva). But when she's hired as a guidance counselor at her alma mater, she stumbles across a decade-­old murder, and soon ancient history isn't all that's coming back to haunt her. Old ghosts as well as new ones are coming out of the woodwork, some to test her, some to vex her, and it isn't only because she's a mediator, gifted with second sight.

What happens when old ghosts come back to haunt you? If you're a mediator, you might have to kick a little ass.

From a sophomore haunted by the murderous specter of a child, to ghosts of a very different kind—­including Paul Slater, Suze's ex, who shows up to make a bargain Suze is certain must have come from the Devil himself—­ Suze isn't sure she'll make it through the semester, let alone to her wedding night. Suze is used to striking first and asking questions later. But what happens when ghosts from her past—­including one she found nearly impossible to resist—­strike first?

 

Uno

I
T STARTED WHILE
I was in the middle of an extremely heated online battle over a pair of black leather platform boots. That's when a chime sounded on my desktop, letting me know I'd received an e-mail.

Ordinarily I'd have ignored it, since my need for a pair of stylish yet functional boots was at an all-time high. My last ones had met with an unfortunate accident when I was mediating a particularly stubborn NCDP (Non-Compliant Deceased Person) down at the Carmel marina, and both of us had ended up in the water.

Unfortunately, I was at work, and my boss, Father Dominic, frowns on his employees ignoring e-mails at work, even at an unpaid internship like mine.

Muttering, “I'll be back,” at the screen (in what I considered to be a pretty good imitation of Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator), I clicked my in-box, keeping the screen to the auction open. With their steel-reinforced toes and chunky heels, these boots were perfect for dealing with those who needed a swift kick in the butt in order to encourage them to pass on to the afterlife, though I doubt that's why the person who kept trying to outbid me—Maximillian28, a totally lame screen name—wanted them so badly.

But if there's anything I've learned in the mediation business, it's that you shouldn't make assumptions.

Which is exactly what I realized when I saw the name of the e-mail's sender. It wasn't one of my coworkers at the Mission Academy, let alone a parent or a student. It wasn't a family member or friend, either.

It was someone I hadn't had any contact with in a long, long time—someone I'd hoped never to hear from again. Just seeing his name in my in-box caused my blood to boil . . . or freeze. I wasn't sure which.

Forgetting about the boots, I clicked on the e-mail's text.

To: [email protected]

Fr: [email protected]

Re: Your House

Date: November 16 1:00:02 PM PST

Hi, Suze.

I'm sure you've heard by now that my new company, Slater Industries, has purchased your old house on 99 Pine Crest Road, as well as the surrounding properties.

You've never been a sentimental kind of girl, so I doubt you'll have a problem with the fact that we'll be tearing your house down in order to make way for a new Slater Properties development of moderately sized family homes (see attached plans). My numbers are below. Give me a call if you want to talk.

You know, it really bothers me that we haven't stayed in touch over the years, especially since we were once so close.

Regards to Jesse.

Best,

Paul Slater

P.S.: Don't tell me you're still upset over what happened graduation night. It was only a kiss.

I stared at the screen, aware that my heart rate had sped up. Sped up? I was so angry I wanted to ram my fist into the monitor, as if by doing so I could somehow ram it into Paul Slater's rock-hard abs. I'd hurt my knuckles doing either, but I'd release a lot of pent-up aggression.

Did I
have a problem
, as Paul had so blithely put it, with the fact that he'd purchased my old house—the rambling Victorian home in the Carmel Hills that my mom and stepdad had lovingly renovated nearly a decade earlier for their new blended family (myself and my stepbrothers Jake, Brad, and David)—and was now intending to tear it down in order to make way for some kind of hideous subdivision?

Yeah. Yeah, I had
a problem
with that, all right, and with nearly every other thing he'd written in his stupid e-mail.

And not because I'm sentimental, either.

He had the nerve to call what he'd done to me on graduation night “only a kiss”? Funny how all this time I'd been considering it something else entirely.

Fortunately for Paul, I'd never been stupid enough to mention it to my boyfriend, Jesse, because if I had, there'd have been a murder.

But since Hispanic males make up about 37 percent of the total prison population in California (and Paul evidently had enough money to buy the entire street on which I used to live), I didn't see a real strong chance of Jesse getting off on justifiable homicide, though that's what Paul's murder would have been, in my opinion.

Without stopping to think—huge mistake—I pulled my cell phone from the back pocket of my jeans and angrily punched in one of the numbers Paul had listed. It rang only once before I heard his voice—deeper than I remembered—intone smoothly, “This is Paul Slater.”

“What the hell is your problem?”

“Why, Susannah Simon,” he said, sounding pleased. “How nice to hear from you. You haven't changed a bit. Still so ladylike and refined.”

“Shut the hell up.”

I'd like to point out that I didn't say
hell
either time. There's a swear jar on my desk—Father Dominic put it there due to my tendency to curse. I'm supposed to stick a dollar in it for every four-letter word I utter, five dollars for every F-bomb I drop.

But since there was no one in the office to overhear me, I let the strongest weapons in my verbal arsenal fly freely. Part of my duties in the administrative offices of the Junípero Serra Mission Academy (grades K–12)—where I'm currently trying to earn some of the practicum credits I need to get my certification as a school counselor—are to answer the phone and check e-mails while all of my supervisors are at lunch.

What do my duties not include? Swearing. Or making personal phone calls to my enemies.

“I just wanted to find out where you are,” I said, “so I can drive to that location and then slowly dismember you, something I obviously should have done the day we met.”

“Same old Suze,” Paul said fondly. “How long has it been, anyway, six years? Almost that. I don't think I've heard from you since the night of our high-school graduation, when your stepbrother Brad got so incredibly drunk on Goldschläger that he hurled all over Kelly Prescott's Louboutins. Ah, memories.”

“He wasn't the only one who was drunk, if I recall,” I reminded him. “And that isn't all that happened that night. You know what I've been doing since then, besides getting my counseling degree? Working out, so that when we meet again, I can—”

I launched into a highly anatomical description of just where, precisely, I intended to insert Paul's head after I physically removed it from his body.

“Suze, Suze, Suze.” Paul feigned shock. “So much hostility. I find it hard to believe they allowed someone like you into a counseling training program. Have the people in charge there ever even
met
you?”

“If they met you, they'd be wondering the same thing I am: how a manipulative freak like you isn't locked up in a maximum-security penitentiary.”

“What can I say, Simon? You've always brought out the romantic in me.”

“I think you're confusing the word
romantic
with sociopathic sleazebag. And you're lucky it was Debbie Mancuso and not Jesse who came along when you were pawing at me that night like an oversexed howler monkey, because if it had been, he'd—”

“—have given me another one of those trademarked beatings of his that I so richly deserve. Yes, yes, I know, Suze, I've heard all this before.”

Paul sighed. He and my boyfriend have never gotten along, mainly because Jesse had been an NCDP for a while and Paul—who, like me, was born with the so-called “gift” to communicate with those trapped in the spirit world—had been determined to keep him that way, mostly so that Paul could get into my pants.

Fortunately, he'd failed on both accounts.

“Could we move on, please?” Paul asked. “This is very entertaining, but I want to get to the part about how I now own your family home. You heard the news, right? Not about your house—I can tell by your less than graceful reaction that you only just found out about that. I mean about how Gramps finally croaked, and left me the family fortune?”

“Oh, no. Paul, I'm—”

I bit my lip. His grandfather had been cantankerous at times, but he'd also been the only person in Paul's family—besides his little brother, Jack—who'd genuinely seemed to care about him. I wasn't surprised to hear that he'd passed on, however. The old man had already been in pretty bad shape when I'd met him from “shifting” back and forth too often through time, a skill mediators possess, but are warned not to use. It's considered hazardous to their health.

Still, it felt wrong to say
I'm sorry for your loss
to Paul, considering he was acting like the world's biggest jackhole.

It didn't end up mattering. Paul wanted something from me, but it wasn't my condolences.

“Yeah, you're talking to one of
Los Angeles
magazine's most eligible bachelors,” he went on, oblivious. “Of course my parents aren't too happy about it. They had the nerve to take me to court to contest the will, can you believe that?”

“Uh . . . yes?”

“Funny. But justice prevailed, and I'm now the president and CEO of Slater Industries. I've got a home on both coasts and a private jet to fly between them, but—as the magazine put it—no one special with whom to share them.” I could hear the mocking tone in his voice. “Interested in being that special someone, Suze?”

“I'll pass, thanks,” I said coolly. “Especially since you can't think of anything more creative to do with your new fortune than knock down other people's houses. Which I don't think you can even do legally. Mine's nearly two hundred years old. It's still got the original carved newel post on the staircase from when it was built in 1850. It has stained-glass windows. It's a historic landmark.”

“Actually, it isn't. Oh, it's quaintly charming in its own way, I suppose, but nothing historic ever occurred there. Well, except for what happened between you and me,” he smirked, “and considering the way you've been avoiding me these past few years, I guess I'm not the only one who remembers that as being historically significant.”

“Nothing ever happened between us, Paul,” I said. He was only trying to get under my skin, the same way he'd tried to get under my bra at graduation. That's how he operated, much like a chigger, or various other bloodsucking parasites. “Nothing good, anyway.”

“Ouch, Simon! You sure know how to hurt a guy. I distinctly recall one afternoon in my bedroom when you did not seem at all repulsed by my advances. Why, you even—”

“—walked out on you, remember? And no one can tear down a house that old. That has to be a violation of some kind of city code.”

“You slip enough money to the right politicians, Simon, you can get permits to do anything you want in the great state of California. That's why they call it the land of opportunity. Congratulations, by the way, on your stepfather's success. Who would have thought that little home-improvement show of Andy Ackerman's would become an international sensation. Where'd your parents move to with all the money he's raking in from the syndication rights? Bel Air? Or the Hills? Don't worry, it happens to everyone. I'm sure they haven't let fame go to their heads. Your mother is a lovely woman with such gracious manners, which is more than I can say for her only daughter—”

“You say one more word about my mother,” I snarled, “and I will end you, Paul, like I should have done years ago. I will find you, wherever you are, remove your head from your body, and stuff it up your—”

“You already used that one,” Paul reminded me. “So I take it that you
do
have a sentimental side, Suze. How surprising. I always knew you had a soft spot for that undead boyfriend of yours, of course, but I never expected it to extend to real estate. Oh, wait—Jesse must be more than just a boyfriend now that you managed to reunite his body with his soul. I'm afraid I've been a bit out of the loop lately—and who has time to read their alumni newsletter anyway? Have you two tied the knot? Wait, silly me—of
course
you have. It's been six years since high school! I know a love as passionate as the one you and that necromantic cholo shared couldn't
possibly
wait six years to be consummated. And from what I remember, Hector ‘Jesse' de Silva respected you far too much ever to try to get into your pants without the sanctity of holy matrimony.”

I felt my cheeks begin to burn. I told myself it was indignation at his racism—
necromantic cholo
? Really?—but I knew some of it was due to a different emotion entirely. I was happy Paul wasn't in the same room with me, or he'd surely have noticed. He'd always been discomfortingly sharp-eyed.

“Jesse and I are engaged,” I said, controlling—with an effort—my impulse to swear at him some more. In the past, anytime Paul was able to evoke any kind of emotion from me at all—even a negative one—it pleased him.

And the last thing I'd ever wanted to do was please Paul Slater.

“Engaged?” Paul crowed. “What is this, the 1950s? People still get
engaged
? Do people even get
married
? I mean, straight people?”

I really should have thought before I acted and never called him in the first place, I thought miserably, eyeing a poster Ms. Diaz, the Mission Academy guidance counselor, had stuck on the wall over by the entrance to her office. It was one of those posters ubiquitous to the profession, a blown-up photo of a kitten struggling to hang on to a tree branch emblazoned with the words
Aim High
!

Too late, I realized I ought to have aimed high and approached Paul with cool dispassion, not let my emotions get in the way. That was the only way to handle him.

But he'd always been good at pushing my buttons.

All
my buttons.