Must Love Ghosts (7 page)

“Oh good,” Tia said. “I thought I was imagining fireworks.”

Dec quirked his lips at her and she whirled on Billy. “What do you mean you were ‘having some fun'? You tried to terrorize my guests!”

“Pfff. No one was scared. I must be losing my touch.” He tried to grin again, but his mouth drooped.

“Christ.” Dec shoved a hand through his hair, his breathing still not back to normal, sexual frustration etched in his tight features. Tia's knees went a little weak. “What's up with the giant power draw? You didn't need to knock out electricity on the whole street to manifest.”

“I was distracted,” Billy said defensively.

Tia narrowed her eyes, remembering Cassandra's frozen shock when she'd stared at Billy's photo on the mantel. “Mrs. Jameson recognized you. Spill it, Uncle Billy. What's going on?”

Her great-uncle pressed his lips together and suddenly a tiny gold key appeared in his hand. He turned it on his lips then threw it over his shoulder. The key disappeared before it hit the red bricks of her fireplace.

Tia crossed her arms. “I've got all night,” she said as menacingly as she could.

“You owe her, Billy.” Dec put his arm around her. Despite herself, she burrowed into his warmth.

The ghost sighed. As he expelled air—or whatever happened when a ghost exhaled—his body rose, still cross-legged, a few inches off the brick hearth. “Of all the haunted houses in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”

“Spare me the Bogart,” Dec said. “You told me a million stories last night, but not this one?”

“It's personal.” Billy drew himself up, as though giving himself an internal pep talk. “All right. Here goes. Remember I told you I met a girl the night
The Maltese Falcon
came out? That was her. Cassie.” Apparently interpreting their blank looks correctly, Billy continued. “Cassandra Howard Jameson. We fell in love that night.”

Tia tried, and failed, to picture a young, lovestruck Cassandra.

The creases in Dec's forehead suggested he was struggling with the same image. “I guess she wasn't always a hundred and five.”

“She's ninety-one, ya mook. And show some respect, will ya? She's had a hard life.” He fell into a brooding kind of silence, apparently reliving some memory or other.

“Hard life?” Tia was incredulous. “She married an extremely wealthy man and, by all accounts, they lived happily ever after. Six children, eighteen grandchildren, and now great-grandchildren popping up. She wanted to fund my work—incidentally, a big step in my career that you destroyed—because she believes in the benefits of long-term, stable marriages.”

Billy's lower lip edged out. “It broke her heart when I died. She moved on. She loved that husband of hers enough, but it wasn't like what the two of us had.”

Tia snorted. “Is that why you're still here? You think she hasn't gotten over a broken heart in, what is it? Seventy-something years?”

“Nice, Tia. Romantic to the core.” Dec gave her a disgusted look and took a seat next to Billy on the hearth. He slapped him on the back, his hand sinking into Billy's iridescence and making no sound. “Ignore your grand-niece. She doesn't believe in love.”

That was so unfair. “I most certainly do. But I happen to understand that what we call love is only a biochemical response that evolved to ensure the perpetuation of our species.”

“You can do better than this pill of a woman,” Billy said to Dec. His shoulders sank. “She wouldn't recognize love if it slapped her on the can.”

Dec met her gaze and his dark eyes danced in amusement. “I'll have to try that.”

A sudden image of Dec slapping her ass flashed into Tia's mind. Her mouth went dry. She wasn't sure if she was turned on or outraged.

Billy glanced between the two of them. “About those intentions—”

Dec cut him off. “Why'd you show up here after Tia threatened to drop you in the ocean?”

Billy's lightning grin replaced his brooding expression. “No way she'd make good on that threat. And if she tried, you'd stop her. You're not the first glory-hound ghost hunter I've met in the afterlife, buddy. I've got your number.”

An uneasy feeling crawled its way up Tia's spine. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“Lover boy thinks I'm his big chance to prove to the world that ghosts exist. He's not going to stand around and let you scatter my soul to the wind, even if you were mean enough to try it, which you're not.”

“You think Dec is playing me.”

Dec's face turned to stone.

“Like a trumpet.” Billy leaned back against the fireplace bricks, crossed his arms. “And you're letting him because you're in love with him, no matter how much psychobabble you use to deny it. That's what love is. It reaches into your chest and rips your heart out and you don't care because your heart doesn't belong to you anymore. You've given it, and everything else you've got, to someone else.”

“We call that codependency,” Tia said, and Dec gave a bark of laughter.

Her unease melted away now that she recognized the unhealthy thought patterns Billy clung to. She wasn't in love with Dec, and she didn't see how he could be playing her unless you counted using her for sex, but that was pretty much a mutual thing. One she wasn't gong to discuss with her great-uncle.

Dec crossed the room and perched on the arm of the sofa, helped himself to her chocolate cake. “Let's analyze Tia's and my relationship another time. Tell us about Cassandra. You've been in love with her all this time?”

“Yeah. I'm a lovesick sap of a ghost.” Billy sighed. “When they brought my body back, I tried to contact her. But she's as bad as Tia when it comes to repelling ghosts. Couldn't do much more than slam a couple of doors and give her a chill. Got a medium to visit her house with a message from me, but she threw the man out. Called him a fraud and threatened to have him arrested.”

Dec glanced at her. “Two of a kind,” he murmured.

Unable to meet his gaze, Tia busied herself plumping the throw pillow on an armchair. “That's why she said she wasn't going to fall for those tricks again. When you were pulling your juvenile stunts earlier, you reminded her of what happened all those years ago.” A sudden thought straightened her spine, pillow clutched in one hand. “Oh my God, she thinks I was trying to
con
her?”

“Sucks, doesn't it, sweetheart?” Dec looked entirely too smug.

“I'll never get used to men using that kind of language in front of ladies,” Billy said sadly, and the smirk fell from Dec's face. “Listen. I need your help. You've got to get Cassandra back over here. I meant to pop in on your guests, but I didn't expect
her.
Shocked me silly to see her, and I blew it. But I want to talk to her. I need to talk to her, after all these years.”

Tia's heart pinched. She sank into the armchair. “Uncle Billy, I don't think there's any way I can get Cassandra back here. She's deeply suspicious of me already.”

Dec pushed the plate of cake to her and rose to pace in front of the fireplace. “There has to be a way. This is what Billy's been waiting for all these years. This is what will allow his soul to move on.”

“Dec, even if we got her over here somehow, we'd probably give the poor woman a heart attack. She's not exactly young.”

“I've never seen anyone have a heart attack from encountering a ghost.”

“My Cassie's strong. Her heart's not going to give out.”

They were all silent for a moment, then Billy's face lit up. “I've got it! Her letters.”

“Letters?” Tia said.

“We wrote letters to each other during the war. The ones Cassandra wrote to me got sent back with my things when I went MIA. Bernie kept them. She tried to give the letters back, but Cassie didn't want to see her. Bet there's a bundle of letters still in Bernie's attic.” The fevered glow in Billy's eyes matched the glowing aura around him. “You can explain to Cassie that I'm your great-uncle and you've got the letters. She probably hates you enough to come get them herself, just to keep you from reading them.”

“That sounds plausible,” Tia said reluctantly. “I haven't cleaned out Nana's things yet. I guess we could go over there and look for the letters tomorrow. That'll give her time to cool off.”

“I'll help,” Dec said, his dark eyes on her. Her pulse jumped. “First thing in the morning?”

She shook her head. “I've got a full load of classes tomorrow, plus a counseling appointment in the evening.”

“Okay. I'll cook a late dinner for us at my place and we can head to your grandmother's afterward.”

His voice was smooth, casual, as he faced her across the coffee table.
Just a friendly working dinner
, his tone seemed to promise, but whether or not
he
was sincere, she didn't trust herself with Dec. The memory of their kiss spun through her brain, and every cell in her body wanted her to find a rationalization that would allow her to go to bed with Dec.

If he kissed her again, she might not even wait for the rationalization.

“I can search the attic on my own,” she said. “You don't have to be there.”

He smiled that dare-you grin that suckered her the first time. “Scared to be alone with me?”

“Absolutely not.”

“We'll find the letters faster if we work together. I promise to keep my hands to myself if you do.”

Her only rebuttal was a weak snort.

This was happening too fast. She was too deep with Dec already.

Tia picked up her red pen and pulled the first exam toward her, but the beautiful, sunny Colorado day beyond her window was far more alluring than Psych 101 papers. In the distance, snow blanketed the tops of the Flatirons but the temperature here in the valley was in the sixties, or so she'd read on her weather app. She hadn't been outside to confirm since arriving at work at seven in the morning.

She wanted to be outside. The walls of her cramped office were closing in on her.

Tiny green buds dotted the limbs of otherwise-bare trees. Five floors below, university students wandered through the quad, their relaxed smiles convincing Tia that a lovely spring breeze was blowing. She might have to stay cooped up in her office, especially after Richard's ominous visit first thing this morning, but she could at least enjoy some fresh air.

Tia pushed her glasses farther up her nose, then climbed onto her desk, knees planted in the bare spaces between the stacks of exams, and pushed up on the window. It didn't budge.

She wiped her hands on her slacks. More leverage should work. She pushed harder on the stubborn pane of glass. Nothing.

“Dammit.” She tried flipping the lock. In four years, she'd never once opened her window. Maybe it was jammed from disuse. “Why won't you open?”

“Are you trying to escape?”

The amused voice belonged to her friend Adele. Tia yanked her hands back from the glass, feeling like a cat burglar in reverse.

She turned, offered a wobbly smile. “Maybe.”

Concern crossed Adele's face and she flipped a long strand of corkscrew curls over one shoulder. She wore a peasant blouse and an ankle-length brightly patterned wrap skirt, looking like her usual hippie-chick self. “Let's have lunch on the quad. You don't have to jump out the window to enjoy this gorgeous day.

Fifteen minutes later, they sat at a small metal table in the spring sunshine. Each of them had a big salad in a plastic clamshell container.

Adele tossed a bit of her breadstick to an eager squirrel, then looked guiltily at Tia. “I know I shouldn't feed them. They're too aggressive already from all the free handouts, but when they turn their beady little eyes on me, I can't help myself.” She tilted her head, her expression turning serious. “You okay?”

Tia poked her fork around her salad for a piece of avocado, and ignored the squirrel doing a little back-and-forth dance as he calculated the likelihood of getting more food. “Sure. Just didn't get much sleep last night.”

“Don't tell me Richard changed his routine and kept you up all night on a school night?”

“I—” Tia's voice cracked and she realized with horror that her eyes were filling with tears.

Adele reached across the table to cover Tia's hand with her own. “What is it?”

The worry on Adele's face broke Tia's resolve to keep her problems to herself. The whole story spilled out—as much of it as she could tell without revealing that her great-uncle was haunting her. Mostly, she dwelled on her visit with Richard that morning. Jules had called him and said the Jameson Foundation would fund the research project as long as Tia had no part in it. Richard had accepted, of course.

“I never liked him.” Adele crunched into a stack of lettuce with her fork. “So Dec's back in your life? Now that's a man who'll keep a woman up all night, and not just on Saturdays.”

“I never should have told you about that.” Tia pretended a great interest in cutting a piece of grilled chicken into bite-size pieces. “Anyway, Dec and I are just friends.”

Adele leaned back in her chair, cackling. Her big smile lit up her face. “Yeah, my students are big on that friends-with-benefits stuff too. Tell me everything.”

“That's not what I meant. And I'm not discussing my sex life.”

“Come on. I'm in a two-year dry spell. Let me live vicariously.”

“No.” Tia tried to sound firm, but laughed instead. “There's nothing to tell. Really. I'm not getting involved.”

“That's what you said last time you two were dating. Why are you so down on this relationship before it even gets going?”

“Because I know about this stuff. I research it for a living. This kind of white-hot passion always dies. Then you're left to build a relationship from the ashes of a fleeting feeling. A feeling meant only to make sure two people mate and stay together long enough to get a child started in life.”