Mask - A Stepbrother Romance (10 page)

I wanted to tell her the truth about him, but I couldn’t bring up the whole depressing drug money story; not out here in public. Plus, I didn’t want Roy to be responsible for ruining our day out, either. I wanted it to get back to the fun camaraderie we’d had earlier, so I simply shrugged and changed the subject.

“How about this bee costume?” I said, pointing at a rack nearby.

She snickered, the subject of Roy seemingly forgotten already, and I breathed a quiet sigh of relief. “A bee costume? Who makes these things?” she said.

“The same people who make the slutty cat costumes, I presume.”

“I suppose. What are you going to buy, anyway?” she asked.

“I have my costume already. I’m just gonna wear the same thing I wore last time I got invited to a Halloween party.”

“Are you going to tell me what it is?”

“It’s a surprise.”

She stuck her tongue out at me. “Is the surprise that it’s totally lame?”

I held my hands up and grinned. “You got me. I’m going as Maverick from Top Gun.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Yup, totally lame.”

“Says the girl who wants to go as an aardvark...”

“Shut up,” she said, playfully elbowing me and giving me a cheeky smile. “Ooh, can you go and have a look at the hats and see if anything gives you any inspiration for me? I’m struggling now. I have to outdo your lameness somehow.”

“Of course.” I smiled before sauntering over to the accessories.

I looked around for a while and picked up odd bits and pieces, finding nothing that gave me any amazing ideas, but I suddenly spotted something else. It wouldn’t help with Rayna’s costume at all, but I was sure she’d think it was a cool jokey kinda thing all the same.

“Rayna, check this out!” I said, holding up the cardboard box I’d picked up. It was a Hasbro board game called Ouija Board—one of those silly supposedly supernatural things that kids used at slumber parties to pretend to summon spirits. I knew some people who were actually scared of the boards and thought they really worked, but if they did, then why on earth would Hasbro market it as a game? It was total bullshit, but it might be a fun thing to try out as a joke with Halloween coming up and all.

Rayna sidled up to me a moment later. “What is it?”

“It’s a Ouija board.”

“One of those spirit summoning things where they spell things out?” she asked, her eyebrows arched curiously.

“Yeah. Why don’t we get it for a laugh? Get in the spirit of Halloween and so on. Pun not intended.”

“I don’t know, those things kinda freak me out, Jace.”

“It’s not real. It’s just a mass-produced game. Anyway, even if it actually
is
real, we can use it to find that hallway ghost of yours back home.”

She smiled and playfully elbowed me again. “You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?” she said. “Fine, fine, we’ll get your silly board game. Maybe I can summon up a ghost to punch you for making fun of me.”

I grinned. “Fine by me.”

I went and paid for the game up at one of the counters, and when I returned to Rayna, I spotted a big red plastic shopping bag emblazoned with the store’s logo dangling from her arm. “Oh, you already found a costume? That was quick. What is it?” I asked.

She grinned and arched an eyebrow before echoing my earlier words. “It’s a surprise...”

Chapter 12

Rayna

Jace and I burst through the main door to the manor, laughing and chattering excitedly about our day out shopping. There was a completely different vibe between us compared to how things had been only days before, and I was glad for that—no more silence and awkward tiptoeing around. As much as I knew I wanted more than friendship from him, I had to say, I actually liked being friends with him. The fun-loving, easygoing atmosphere was much easier to deal with than the way I’d completely ignored him out of guilt and shame.

Even though paranormal stuff had been creeping me out lately—my manor ghost mystery was still unsolved—and I’d never been into the whole Ouija board thing, I was actually glad Jace had picked up that silly game, because it was a good excuse for us to spend more time together. It was pretty safe to assume that we were never going to be getting close enough to cross the line again—there were only so many times you could make that mistake—and as much as that was a hard pill to swallow, I was grateful that we could at least hang out.

I knew it couldn’t last forever, but I’d vowed to enjoy it while I could. We may have only known each other for a few weeks, but Jace had already had a deep impact on my life, and there would be a massive crater in my heart if he ever decided he no longer wanted my friendship.

I guess I really had a serious crush on him, but that would be over soon. As much as I felt for him now, crushes never lasted longer than a few months.

“Okay, it says on the back of the box that we need candles, so I’ll go and grab some, and you can set up the board on the table,” Jace said, turning to me as we entered the dining room.

“Sure.”

As I watched him leave, I felt a pang of guilt for lying to him. I’d told him I could handle the platonic friendship, and like I said earlier, I loved being friends with him, but I knew I was misleading him by acting as if it was all I wanted.

I began to set the game up, and as I did so, I tried to straighten out my head. This was the exact reason I hadn’t wanted to get emotionally involved with Jace. If this all somehow went to hell, it was going to be very difficult to deal with, and I only had myself to blame. I needed to shut these romantic feelings off. They were only going to get me hurt, and the sooner I accepted that, the better, but thinking those words and actually putting them into action were two very different things.

Jace returned and placed a few tea-light candles around the board, and when he lit them and drew the curtains, the whole room took on a decidedly creepy vibe.

“God, now I feel as if we’re in a horror movie,” I said, my gaze nervously shooting around. “Old manor? Check. Candles and scary spirit game? Check.”

“And a big scary monster named Jace? Check,” he said with a wink.

I laughed, and then I took on a more serious expression. “Do you really think it’s a good idea to mess around with this stuff?” I asked, my voice tinged with trepidation.

His face softened as he looked at me. “Look, to me this is all just a game. I think it’s fun, but if it’s really freaking you out, we can stop,” he said.

I chewed on my lip as I considered his words. The rational part of me was telling me that things like Ouija boards were total bullcrap; nothing more than a party trick to amuse kids going through their experimental phases and rebelling against their god-fearing parents, but at the same time, another part of me was telling me that it was a bad idea. What if ghosts were actually real? I’d never believed in them up until a few weeks ago, but after seeing that woman in the hallway the other month, I was no longer sure. It would be arrogant of me to say that I was so smart that I knew for an absolute fact there was no such thing as a spirit world. After all, no one could possibly know that.

I almost wanted to back out, but I was afraid that I’d look stupid. “No, never mind, I’m just being paranoid,” I said before taking a seat at the table.

Jace joined me. I was concentrating hard on trying to seem calm, but my body was betraying me, and my knees were trembling under the table. I hoped to god that Jace couldn’t feel my shaking legs, otherwise he’d probably think I was the biggest wimp in the history of the universe.
It’s just a game!
I reminded myself.

“We need to put our hands on top of the planchette,” Jace said, concentrating on the game instructions.

He rested his hands on top of mine on the little triangular piece, and he smiled at me. I tried to return the smile, but my face was frozen so much that I felt like my head had been dipped in a vat of Botox.

“Okay, so what do you want to say first?” Jace asked.

“Um…maybe just ask if there are any spirits out there?” I said. I was feeling incredibly stupid now, as if we were actually in some sort of lame eighties horror movie.

“Right.” Jace quickly changed his voice into a creepy silly tone. “Hello…is there anyone out there?”

We sat there for a few minutes, just staring at the board with nothing happening, and my heart was thumping so hard I wouldn’t have been surprised if it exploded right out of my chest and bounced off the walls.

Then the planchette started to slip under my hand, and I watched it slowly move to the box on the board which said ‘Yes’. I knew I hadn’t been moving the piece; my fingers were barely touching it.

“Was that you?” I asked. “That’s not funny if it was.”

“No!” Jace insisted, looking so sincere that I almost believed him. “But the window over there is open. This planchette is quite light, maybe a breeze came through and sort of moved it a bit.”

“Um…okay, I guess it could’ve been that,” I mumbled, though I knew how unlikely it was. I slumped back into my seat and tentatively put my hand back on the piece, waiting to start again.

“Okay, is there a reason you’re here? Is there something you want from us?” Jace asked, looking up at the ceiling before returning his eyes to the board.

I really hoped he didn’t start asking for physical proof that there was someone or something here with us, because I’d probably pass out if chairs starting flying around the room.

Again, the pointer moved to ‘Yes’, then spelled out ‘Rayna’, and I gulped.

“You want Rayna to do something?” Jace asked.

Yes again.

“So what is it you want Rayna to do?” Jace continued.

The planchette started to move once more.

It hit the
B
and I began to feel a bit sick. I’d known this was a bad idea, and yet I’d stupidly gone along with it, just to try and impress Jace and make him think I was cool, rather than the wuss I so clearly was.

Then the pointer hit the letters
L
,
O
and
W
, and I narrowed my eyes. Surely it wasn’t actually saying….

Seconds later, my suspicions were confirmed, and the pointer moved to the letters
J, A, C
and
E
. I jumped up from my seat, anger coursing through my veins. Jace was just fucking with me and I’d allowed myself to get sucked in.

“Screw you, Jace. That’s not funny. Not at all!” I said, my voice heated. “I can’t believe how immature you are!”

I abruptly stood up and stalked out of the room, and I could hear him calling out from behind me as I headed up the staircase.

“It was just a joke! Oh come on, Rayna, I thought you’d think it was funny!”

Funny? No, he’d known I was a bit creeped out by the whole idea, but he’d gone along with it anyway. On top of that, he’d pushed the piece around and made the board spell out ‘BLOW JACE’ as if reminding me of our sexual history was a good idea.

The more I thought about it, the more confused I got over the whole thing. I didn’t know what made me angrier; the fact that he’d played such a stupid, immature prank on me, or the fact that it reminded me I could never have him.

I entered my room, flopped down on my bed and stared at the ceiling, and as my heart raced, I pictured Jace in the forefront of my mind, and I started to become far more annoyed at myself than him. It was my fault. I was the one who’d gone along with it—I could’ve just said ‘no’ to the whole Ouija game idea, but instead I’d basically walked right into Jace’s prank. Besides, he’d given me the chance to back out, and I’d said no because I wanted to impress him. It was just a silly prank, and I’d massively overreacted by storming out.

As I pictured his bright blue eyes, hungry gaze and powerful arms, my anger toward him melted away, and the true underlying reason for the storm of emotions I was feeling become abundantly clear.

Whatever I felt for Jace, it was more than just a silly little crush.

I was actually falling for him.

Chapter 13

Jace

Shit. That wasn’t what I’d intended to happen at all. I thought Rayna would find my little prank funny, but now that I was actually thinking about it, it wasn’t that funny. She probably thought I’d been faking the friendship with her just so I could tell her to ‘blow me’ in an elaborate way, but that hadn’t been it at all. My true intention had been to make her feel better about living in the manor. Judging by the questions she’d been asking my Dad at breakfast the other morning, she obviously still thought there was something creepy about the place, so I’d figured that if I could show her just how silly all the supposedly ‘supernatural’ stuff in the world was, she’d realize there were no ghosts or anything in the manor, and she’d feel more capable of settling in properly.

Well, it had majorly backfired on me, and now I looked like a fucking asshole.

I headed up the stairs, desperate to make it better before she decided to go another few weeks of zero contact with me. We’d only just gotten over the hideous awkwardness of our second failed hookup, so the last thing I’d needed to do was fuck things up again…and yet I had. In all of my excitement to have fun with Rayna and stop her from being afraid of the house, I hadn’t noticed just how afraid she truly was.

I burst into Rayna’s bedroom, quickly spotting her lying flat on her bed. Her face was a little scrunched up but her eyes were closed, so I wasn’t sure whether she was crying or not, and the idea that she might be made me feel about a million times worse.

“Rayna, I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean to upset you.”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s okay,” she muttered, almost under her breath.

Her tone was flat, showing me just how upset she really was. At least she was a little calmer, though. Downstairs a moment ago, she’d been like a hurricane of rage.

“No, no it isn’t.” I sat down next to her on the bed. “I just wanted to make light of a crappy situation. I thought you might still be a bit freaked out about the house and I wanted to make you laugh. I shouldn’t have done that. I’m fucking terrible at making jokes. I think I proved that with the panty incident when you first arrived.”

She looked up at me, her expression starting to soften. “No, really, Jace. It’s fine. I overreacted.”

A slow smile spread across my face as the surprise sank in. I couldn’t believe it; she was actually conceding to me. On the other hand, while I was glad that she was happier, it somehow didn’t feel quite right. There was a heavy feeling in my stomach, as if my subconscious had detected that there was something more to the story than whatever Rayna was letting on.

“It
was
pretty funny,” she added.

She laughed a little, but it was still halfhearted, so I knew I definitely wasn’t one hundred percent forgiven.

“Would a hug make you feel better?” I asked. “I’ll even throw in a free foot massage to make up for being a dumbass.”

She smiled. “Sure.”

I embraced her, knowing full well that there was nothing even remotely sexual about this hug, and she leaned into me. Her body was tense and stiff, so I knew that her heart wasn’t in it, and I thought for a few seconds, wondering what else I could do to make her feel better.

An idea suddenly struck me.

“Hey, you said you saw your ghost near the main third floor stairwell, right?” I asked, pulling away.

She looked at me curiously. “Jace, there was never a ghost. Everyone else is right; I was just sleepwalking. I’m just an idiot for being freaked out.”

I shook my head. “Nah, like I said the other day at breakfast, I think there’s another explanation. Remember how Dad said it’s possible an intruder got in? I was just thinking, if there
was
an actual intruder of some kind here, maybe she ran upstairs to hide after she saw you. Why don’t we go and take a look and see if there’s any footprints? Remember, he said there’s tons of dust up there because of all the renovations, so even though it was a few weeks ago, if the woman you saw in the hallway ran up there, we’ll know.”

“But your Dad said that the fourth floor was out of bounds, didn’t he?”

I stood up, holding out my hand to her. “As long as we’re careful, we’ll be fine. The worst thing that can happen is we’ll get a little dirty from all the dust.”

I wouldn’t have minded getting dirty with her in other ways, but now was definitely not the time to be cracking sleazy jokes, considering how my sleazy Ouija prank had turned out.

She nodded, obviously intrigued by my idea. “Okay, let’s do it,” she said, taking my hand and letting me help her up. “But even if there was an intruder, wouldn’t they have run downstairs, not up? You know, to get out of the place before being caught.”

“Yeah, but maybe not. Worth a shot to take a look anyway,” I replied smoothly.

She was right; I didn’t actually think we were going to find anything up there on the fourth floor, but if it made her feel better to explore the place and see that nothing was out of the ordinary, then I would do it happily.

As we walked up the stairs, I tried to remember what the exact layout had been up here before the renovations had started. It’d been such a long time since I’d ventured up to the fourth floor that it was difficult to think.

“What’s actually up there?” Rayna asked. “Just more bedrooms?”

“Yeah, mostly just another load of guest bedrooms, but there was also a sort of play area. I think it used to be a sitting room of some sort, but when my parents were still together, it was like my little kid’s retreat. While Dad was at work and the staff were cleaning everything downstairs, I’d hang out up here and read or play with Mom.”

“That’s cute. What’s it all being renovated for?”

“I think Dad’s having it renovated so that the guest rooms are all bigger with their own bathrooms. Kinda like what we have in our rooms on the third floor.”

“Oh, cool. Any particular reason why?”

I shrugged. “Because he can, I guess. It’s not like this bloody place doesn’t already have enough rooms.”

I coughed from all the dust as we finally reached the top of the stairs, and I glanced around, spotting an old bookshelf in the hall which must’ve been moved by the team who’d been up here starting on the renovations. The sight of the old shelf sent my mind whizzing back to a time I’d assumed was long gone. I remembered how that very shelf had sat in my play area, filled with books, and when we were up here, Mom would sit on the sofa and read to me.

We’d been so happy then, like a real family. Thinking back to that, it was difficult to remember how or why it had all gone so terribly wrong.

“Oh shit, Jace. Look!”

I turned to see Rayna pointing towards the ground, and I followed her gaze to see a set of footprints in the thick dust that overlaid the wooden floorboards.

“That’s probably just from the workers before they left,” I said. “Either that or Dad.”

On closer inspection, I could see I was wrong about that. These footprints had been made with bare feet, and they weren’t men’s at all. They were small and delicate; they had definitely come from a woman. They also didn’t look completely fresh; they had a thin coating of dust on them, meaning they’d probably been there for a few weeks.

Jesus
…

Rayna hadn’t been sleepwalking after all. Someone had actually been in the house that night; at least that’s what it looked like.

My mind spun around, trying to figure out what the hell all of this meant. Who the hell would break into our house at two in the morning, only to take nothing at all? Could my Dad’s theory be correct—could some drunk woman have somehow wandered onto the property and made her way inside the manor, only to run and hide when she encountered Rayna in the hall? Or was it something more sinister? I’d once heard a nightmarish story of a woman who had somehow attracted a crazed stalker, and the stalker had ended up living in her house for months and hiding out in the attic, only coming out at night to watch her as she slept. She’d discovered the horrifying truth after putting a nanny cam in her room to keep an eye on things around the house when she’d noticed food and other miscellaneous items had been mysteriously vanishing.

I leaned in closer to get a better look at the prints, my heart thumping wildly at the same time. If there was some sort of insane stalker coming in and out of the manor—or worse, living here and hiding out in nooks and crannies—then I wanted to protect Rayna.

“Look,” I said, pointing at the trail of footprints. “They go right along the hall. I should follow them to make sure there isn’t someone still up here somehow. But let’s get you back downstairs first.”

“I don’t know,” she replied hesitantly. “I think I should come with you.”

“You sure?”

She nodded. “Yeah. I feel safe with you.”

My heart swelled at her words. I’d never thought I’d hear those sentiments from a girl, and I definitely never thought it’d feel so great to hear.

“All right. Come on.”

We tiptoed alongside the prints, not wanting to tread on them in case we wanted to show anyone later—Dad, Elena or the police if necessary. We were also careful to make as little sound as possible, and I was so busy focusing on the task at hand that I didn’t notice any of our surroundings until Rayna forced me to.

“Who’s that?” she whispered, pointing to a framed photo on the wall.

It was a picture of the whole family—Mom, Dad and me when I was a child. It had always hung here on the wall in the fourth floor hallway, and Dad must’ve just left it here to gather dust when he’d begun the renovations.

“That’s me, back when I was cute,” I said with a grin, trying to distract Rayna from the image of my mother. I figured that seeing relics from one of Dad’s relationship from so long ago might make her feel uneasy for her own mother’s sake, and I didn’t want that to be her problem.

“And your Mom?” she said, not missing a beat as usual.

I sighed. “Yeah.”

“It looks like your Mom liked books too.” Rayna indicated to a massive stack of novels that had been callously discarded under a pile of rubble from where the work team had knocked out one of the guest bedroom walls. “While we’re here, you should have a quick look and see if there are any you want to keep.”

“Yeah, good idea. Do you think it’s weird that my father’s just letting this stuff sit here, and not getting rid of it properly?”

“Well, you know him better than I do. Do
you
think it’s weird?” she asked. She purposely avoided eye contact with me and started to shuffle through the pile of books. “Do you think she was the love of his life, and he’s never gotten over her or something?”

I joined her on the floor. “I don’t know. I wouldn’t think so, because their relationship ended so badly, but maybe he went on to realize his mistake. Or maybe he just misses having that whole family unit. I don’t know. Maybe that’s why he’s been so nice to me since I got back. He never used to be like that with me, you know. Almost always ignored me, never gave a fuck what I did unless I was somehow embarrassing him.”

“Sorry. I didn’t know he was like that in the past. But maybe my Mom is the one to finally help him move on and want to be a real family man,” she replied.

Her tone sounded as uneasy as I felt. I couldn’t exactly reassure her that Elena was the one, because until recently, I’d always assumed that my Dad didn’t have a ‘one’. I’d just thought that even when he was in his eighties, he’d still be running around with much younger women—women pumped full of Botox and silicone. Then again, Elena wasn’t like that. Just like Rayna, she was a natural beauty, and she was friendly and smart.

“Yeah, maybe. I don’t know,” I finally said.

“Maybe you’re onto something with the family unit thing. Like you said, he seems to be making more of an effort with you now.”

“Yeah.”

That was definitely true, but then again, he still hadn’t asked me anything about my return to London. Perhaps he’d spoken to my Mom and knew exactly what I’d done in Edinburgh, and he simply thought it was too awful to discuss and chose to sweep it under the rug instead.

“Oh, check this out!” I said a moment later, grabbing a particularly old-looking book of stories from the pile. “Mom used to read this to me when I was little. It belonged to her when she was a child too.”

“Take it. It’s yours, after all.” Rayna smiled, and I tucked the book under my arm, just as we heard a loud banging sound echoing through the hall.

“Oh, shit. What the hell was that?” Rayna asked, her eyes wide. Her knuckles turned white as they gripped another book she’d picked up, and I saw her legs tensing, like she was getting ready to run.

“I’m sure it was just something falling down,” I said.

“I don’t know, Jace. Let’s get out of here,” she said. Her voice had turned shrill.

I nodded, knowing she was truly scared right now. “Okay, let’s go.”

She turned and bolted back down the hall and then the stairs, with me only a few steps behind her. She didn’t stop running until we reached the main dining room all the way down on the first floor, and we almost bumped right into our parents who had apparently just returned from the hotel they’d stayed at the night before, after the wedding reception. The echoing bang we’d heard a minute ago must’ve just been from the front door slamming behind them when they came inside.