Thirteen Chances (9 page)

Emma couldn’t help it. She snorted, then choked.

“Are you okay?” asked Zoë.

“Absolutely,” said Emma. “Lots of … lore and legend around here. Very romantic. The B and B owners are very sweet and they’ve shared a few stories with me.”

“That’s nice. But what I meant was have you
met
anyone?”

If there was one thing Emma hated with a passion, it was lying. She’d gotten into many a predicament because of telling the truth, but she’d much rather face that than lie.

She could hold back on information, though.

“Emma?”

“Well, sort of,” Emma said, not lying.

Zoë gasped. “Really? Tell me. Purge. Let it all go, baby. What’s his name?”

Emma slipped a glance around the room and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Christian.”

“Oh! Sexy. Why are you whispering? Is he around?”

“Probably,” said Emma, again, not lying.

“Oh, okay. You can tell me later, then. I’ve got to go, anyway. I see the cake lady coming up the sidewalk. My God, she can tease that beehive hairdo high.”

Ah, relief. “Lots of Aqua Net, I imagine. Good luck with the cake stuff.”

“Um,” hemmed Zoë, “you’re still coming back in time for everything, right?”

Emma frowned. “Of course I am. Stop worrying so much, future Mrs. Zanderfly.”

Zoë giggled. “I like the sound of that. I’ll call ya later.”

And with that, they hung up.

Emma eyeballed the kitchen door.
Interrogation time.

When she entered, all four Ballasters stopped, turned, and looked at her. The smell of sharp spices, sugar, and vanilla hit Emma square in the nose. Her stomach growled.

“Are you ready for more cinnamon cake, love?” asked Willoughby. She inclined her head. “Just took it out of the oven.”

“This time we added semisweet chocolate chips to the batter,” said Maven.

Emma smiled. “Yes, thank you very much.” She paused, twirling the end of her braid. “I met someone today. Very interesting guy.”

The Ballasters gave her an innocent look.

“Really?” said Willoughby.

Emma sighed. “Oh, come on. I know you all know him.” She waited, but the sisters didn’t confess to anything. “Gorgeous guy by the name of Christian? Huge? Tats all over? Great blue eyes?” She gave them a frown.
“Dead?
Ring a bell?”

Willoughby met her sisters’ glances, then simply grinned at Emma. “So he told you his given name, eh?” She giggled. “That didn’t take long.”

Emma leaned against the counter and crossed her arms over her chest. “Only after he tried to scare me by poking both of his swords into my belly.” She glared at all of them. “I want information.”

A smile crossed Willoughby’s face as she came to stand beside Emma. “Well, let’s go have some tea then, shall we? I’ll tell you a bit, but I fear you’ll have to coax the rest out of the lad yourself. ’Tis only right.” She put her hand on Emma’s elbow and tugged. “Come, love. Let’s go sit down.”

Emma resisted, and instead looked her host straight in the eye. “He’s
dead.”

Willoughby blinked, then nodded. “Why yes, of course he is.”

Emma shook her head and allowed Willoughby to lead her into the dining room. Leave it to her
not
to have a normal ghostly encounter with the Gray Lady, or the Green Lady, or even the Lady in White.

No, no.
She
had to have an encounter with
He Who Pokes Swords in Belly.

And of course he had to be brutally handsome.

Precious.

Close to one hour, two cinnamon cakes, and two cups of hot tea later, and Emma once more stood in the foyer of the manor, camera bag on shoulder. There wasn’t much she knew now about the ghost of Arrick-by-the-Sea that she didn’t know before she left him back in the courtyard.

Other than he wasn’t normally so grumpy. Apparently, that was a trait Emma brought out in him.
Great.

According to the sisters, he’d have to tell her whatever it was she wanted to know himself.

So it looked like she was in for another jaunt to the ruins. Not that she minded. The castle was beautiful, the seascape breathtaking, and, well, she just loved it. Plain and simple.

That it came equipped with a phenomenally sexy dead guy was something else to consider.

Zoë would think she’d lost her silly little mind.

Maybe she had.

“Off you go, then,” said Willoughby, with Millicent, Agatha, and Maven all surrounding her. They looked as if they wanted to go, too. “You try to have a nice chat with young Christian. He really can be most charming.”

Emma feared she’d have to see it to believe it.

She smiled. “Thanks. I’ll see ya’ll later.”

The sisters giggled in unison. Emma smiled as she walked out into the cold. At least it’d stopped raining.

“Just call his name, love,” reminded Maven. “Never fear. He’ll hear you.”

“Okay,” Emma said, waved, and headed up the lane. She walked through the gatehouse, into the courtyard, and stopped.

It was empty.

What’d she expect? Him to be just standing around, waiting on her?

She made for the keep and took the set of steps Christian had stopped her from going up before. Willoughby had assured her they were safe enough. Tourists climbed them all the time.

Once at the top, Emma’s breath caught. She indeed found herself in a vast room that once was probably absolutely gorgeous. A large hearth took up the expanse of one entire wall.
An entire wall.
That was one huge fireplace. Almost as huge as the enormous open space, sunk into a large alcove, that Emma could only surmise once used to be a big picture window.

It looked right out over the ocean.

A pair of narrow stone benches faced each other in the alcove, far enough apart that even with her backside on the edge and her feet stretched out, she couldn’t reach the other one. She sat on the left one, and the wind blew in from the gaping hole in the wall, tossing the loose hair that had escaped her braid from her face. The scent of brine washed in, and Emma breathed deeply. The sun had failed to show itself, but somehow, that didn’t exactly bother her.

She looked around. Shadowy corners lurked all throughout the chamber, but she didn’t see anything resembling a hiding warrior. Finally, she took a few deep breaths to calm her nerves, and cleared her throat.

“Christian?” she said, her voice softer than she’d meant.

She waited, but the warrior didn’t show himself.

Maybe he hadn’t heard?

“Mr. Arrick!” she said, this time louder than she’d meant. “I’d, uh … like to talk. To you, I mean.” She sighed. “Please?”

At first, the chamber’s only sound came from the wind tearing in through the holes in the window. It whistled eerily through various cracks and crannies of the ancient stone, somehow making the cold, damp stone that much colder, damper. Outside, the Irish Sea beat mercilessly against the base of Arrick. A lone gull screamed overhead.

Emma thought she’d never felt so alone. She drew in a deep breath.

“You’re still here.”

Emma jumped, startled, and turned in the direction of the voice. Across the chamber, within the depths of the shadows, Christian’s tall form emerged. He didn’t move.

“Well,” started Emma, “of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?”

He remained in the back of the chamber. “Because I told you to leave.”

Emma narrowed her eyes. “Perhaps I’ll leave when you give me one good reason why you want me to so badly.” She craned her neck. “Could you please come over here? I can barely see you.”

“ ’Tis the point.”

“Ugh,” Emma muttered. She grasped the bridge of her nose, massaged, then turned her back to him and stared out to the sea. “Whatever.”

“You have a dreadful temper.”

Emma jumped in spite of her preparation not to. She picked at the distressed hole in the knee of her jeans and glanced over her shoulder. Christian stood just behind her. She turned back to the window. “Can you sit?”

Silently, he slid onto the bench across from her. As enormous as the alcove was, Christian’s big self crowded it.

Emma suddenly realized she didn’t mind that at all.

“Anything else?” Christian asked.

Pulling her legs up, Emma secured them with her arms and studied the ghostly form before her. He looked so real sitting across from her, legs sprawled in a very guylike manner, hands resting casually on his thighs, head back, blue eyes staring out of that crazy, tousled hair. Even the thick veins snaking across the back of his hands looked real enough to have blood pumping through them.

She knew otherwise.

“Are you finished yet?”

Emma blinked, then blushed. “Sorry.” She met his gaze. “It’s not every day that I’m in such close proximity with a dead guy.”

The slightest of movement broke the stone stillness in the corner of his mouth. “I imagine not.” His eyes never strayed from hers.

Emma shifted under his intense scrutiny, and clutched her camera bag. “The sisters told me a little about you.”

One mahogany eyebrow lifted. “Is that so?”

With a nod, Emma continued. “I couldn’t squeeze much information from them, though.” She gave him a slight grin. “They told me I had to get it from you personally.”

He leaned forward, ever so slightly. The movement again made the space of the alcove feel tiny. “If I tell you what you want to know, will you leave?”

Emma met his fierce gaze with one of her own. “Absolutely.” And that wasn’t a lie. Not at all. She had a return ticket in her suitcase at the manor, just to prove it. Of course she’d leave. Her business and life were an ocean away.

Christian gave a slight nod. “Verra well. What do you wish to know?”

Emma studied the warrior before her. It hardly made sense at all—any of it, actually. Here she was, sitting in an ancient fortress, sharing space with a mouthwatering ghost, and she had the floor. She could ask the questions that had been burning her brain ever since she realized just what she was dealing with.

She’d barely come to terms with that, actually.

A
ghost?
It sounded absurd.

Emma brought her legs down and sat cross-legged, hands folded in her lap. She thought about her first question, and then smiled. “Why did it take my dangling for a second time off those steps to get you to reappear?”

The frown was back on Christian’s face.

Emma could hardly wait for his answer.

Why, oh bloody why, did the gel have to ask that?

He looked at Emma hard. Hell, he couldn’t keep his eyes off her.

“Because,” he started, “I didn’t want you to fall and break your scrawny neck.”

She cocked her head. “Why is it that hordes of tourists can venture onto Arrick’s lands, climb all through the ruins, and yet when I arrive, you want nothing more than for me to leave?” She leaned forward. “How many tourists have you scared the wits out of by poking those swords through their gut?”

He frowned. “Dozens.”

She frowned back. “Why are you so cranky?”

Christian studied her. His strength to remain angry at her was fading fast. She was infectious to be around—more so now than ever before. And by the saints, he really didn’t want her to leave. Memories of past wooing assaulted him, so much that he thought twice about trying to force her to go—even if it was for her own good.

He was an idiot.

“Okay,” Emma said, her tone lightened. She relaxed, and she smiled.

He nearly fell off the bloody bench at the beauty of it.

“Let’s try a new approach,” she suggested. “All this grumpiness is very out of character for me. Not natural.”

“You seem to be holding your own.”

She rolled her eyes. “Let’s start over, okay? Let’s forget about all that dangling from the steps, hollering, and sword swinging.” She stuck her hand out. “I’m Emma Calhoun.”

Christian stared at her hand; then he couldn’t help it. He grinned. “I know.”

“Oops,” she said, withdrawing her hand and using it to push a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “Sorry.” Then she quirked a brow. “How did you know? My name, I mean.” She stared at him with those fathomless eyes. He couldn’t help but drop his gaze to her mouth. Christ, the memory of his first taste of Emma’s lips hadn’t faded …

“Emma?” Christian said in a low voice.

“Aye?” she replied.

Christian pushed a long strand of hair from Emma’s cheek. Her skin felt soft against his roughened knuckle. He looked at her then, his heart in his throat. “Can I kiss you?”

Emma said nothing, but a smile began and stretched across her cheeks. She simply nodded. Slowly, he ducked his head and pressed his lips to hers …

“Christian? My name?”

He shook his head as the memory faded. It was like a punch in the gut that she remembered nothing.

Christian cleared his throat and leaned back. “I know everything that goes on around my lands, Ms. Calhoun.”

“Emma,” she said, smiling.

Her gaze dropped to his mouth. ’Twas no mistaking, she’d done so. That familiar clout to his heart nearly knocked him backward. He didn’t know whether to rejoice, or beg her to leave at once.

Christian had a feeling no amount of begging would make her leave any sooner than when she wanted to leave.

“This is so unbelievable,” she muttered, looking now at her hands. She looked up. “It’s unfathomable, to be sitting here with you, like this, and you like … that.” She rubbed her chin. “Did I really fall from those steps and am lying somewhere, dazed and dreaming?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. She got up from the bench and started walking around the chamber.

“I mean,” she said, inspecting each corner, “who would have ever thought this was possible? Who
really
believes in ghosts?” She shook her head and bent to retrieve something off the floor. She looked at it, tossed it a few times, then closed her fingers over it, and continued her pacing. “People get feelings that others exist on another plane. They don’t really sit down and have a chat—
oh!”
In the next instant, she stumbled and fell hard to the floor. Quickly, she pushed to her backside and sat. Something dropped from her hand and clattered against the stone.