Ready & Willing (16 page)

“Why can you see and hear him but not me?” he asked.

“Silas says it’s because you don’t have a soul. He can’t haunt anyone who doesn’t have one.”

Nathaniel still didn’t look convinced. “Has anyone else seen him?” he asked as he dropped his hand back to his side.

“Not seen him, no. But my next door neighbor, Cecilia, can hear him.”

That surprised him, too. “What? Does she only have half a soul or something that she can hear but not see him?”

Audrey looked to Silas for clarification on that, but he only shook his head.

“I have no idea why Cecilia can’t see me,” he said. “Though I suspect it’s because she isn’t opening herself up to the possibility. Having seen inside her, I’ve deduced that she’s somewhat . . . complicated.”

Instead of relaying all that to Nathaniel, Audrey only said, “He doesn’t know what’s up with Cecilia.”

“Can you get her over here?” Nathaniel asked.

Audrey looked at her watch. She’d asked Cecilia to run some errands for her after she finished with lunch, enough that she probably wouldn’t get back for a few hours. “Not for a while,” she said. Then, because she was beginning to lose patience—and because she wanted Nathaniel to leave before she started having to think about why she suddenly didn’t want him to leave—she added, “So do you believe me about all this or not?”

He pulled his sweater around himself again, not seeming to realize he even did it. “I don’t know yet,” he said.

“When will you know?”

“After I go home and Google Monica Baranski.”

Before Audrey could say another word, he was thanking her for her time, telling her he’d be in touch, saying, “Good-bye, Audrey,” and making his way downstairs. She heard the front door close behind him before she was even able to get out a good-bye of her own. Not that she’d especially wanted to tell Nathaniel good-bye, but having him just up and leave made her feel like the ill-used girlfriend again. Which was beyond weird, since she was in no way his girlfriend, and she hadn’t been particularly ill-used. Blown off, sure. Ill-used? No.

Weirder still, she thought, just when—and why—had he started feeling so comfortable calling her Audrey instead of Mrs. Magill? More to the point, just when—and why—had she started thinking of him as Nathaniel?

Eight

A little more than two hours after leaving Audrey Magill’s house, Nathaniel sat in front of the computer in his office at home, staring at the image on his monitor. It was a photograph of Audrey Fine Magill on her wedding day. He was supposed to be Googling Monica Baranski—and he had, for all of fifteen minutes, which was long enough to discover that she was indeed working as an anesthesiologist for a hospital in Connecticut, and that she was living in a zip code whose average annual income surpassed his own. She also had an address in Naples, Florida, in a different zip code whose average annual income surpassed his own. And a house just outside of Paris, France, in a postal code whose average income—oh, all
right
—also surpassed his own. So having discovered that what Audrey had told him about his third-grade crush was evidently entirely true, he’d started Googling Audrey instead.

And he’d discovered quite a lot about her. He’d discovered even more about her husband, Sean.

Late husband,
he reminded himself. And then he tried to ignore, unsuccessfully, a pang of guilt for experiencing a twinge of . . . gratitude for the man’s death? Oh, surely not. He might be a bastard who’d lost his soul, but he wasn’t so far gone that he would be grateful for the most profound loss a person could suffer, even if it did mean that the loss made Audrey Fine Magill available.

No, not available,
he reminded himself further. She’d said herself that she was still married. She continued to wear the ring her husband had given her ten years ago, even three years after his death. That didn’t exactly make her available. Not that he should want that, anyway, regardless of how it had come about. The last kind of person he needed to get involved with was a woman like her. One who
wasn’t
one-dimensional, undemanding, and decorative, the way he liked his women to be.

The wedding photo had shown up on one of those websites people used for uploading personal photos so they could be shared with friends and family. The person who’d uploaded them had done so after hosting a party for Audrey and Sean Magill’s fifth anniversary. There were photos of both the party and the wedding and of the years in between. And in every one of the photos, Audrey looked happy. Genuinely, unabashedly happy, the way Nathaniel would have said it was impossible for anyone to feel. Her husband looked that way, too. There wasn’t a single photograph of the couple where they weren’t touching each other somehow. None where they weren’t smiling or laughing. None where they looked anything other than besotted with each other. Nathaniel couldn’t imagine what it must feel like to be that much in love with someone. And not just because he was currently without a soul.

Audrey Fine had been a beautiful bride, he thought as he took in the unadorned white dress that hugged her curves and the single white flower tucked behind one ear. She hadn’t gone for the excessive look, and the simplicity of her attire only enhanced her beauty even more. Sean Magill was a handsome groom, blond, blue-eyed, and dressed in what Nathaniel supposed was the formal uniform of the Louisville Metro Police Department.

He skittered the mouse to the top left of the screen to scroll back to a previous one. An article in the
Courier-Journal
dated a little over three years ago described the death of a young police officer after he’d responded to a report of a domestic dispute. A man who had been threatening his wife and children with a handgun used the weapon on Sean instead, after Sean had tried to calmly talk the man out of doing what he’d been threatening to do. Audrey’s husband had died at University Hospital five hours later, his partner and his wife of seven years at his side.

Nathaniel scrolled backward again, this time to the website for Audrey’s Third Street hat shop, Finery, on the page that was headed, “Meet the Milliner.” Audrey had been born and raised in Louisville. She was a graduate of Iroquois High School, class of ’89, and Bellarmine University, class of ’93. She’d worked for a prominent local accounting firm until a year ago, when she’d decided she simply couldn’t ignore her passion for making hats anymore, a passion she’d indulged as a sideline until then. In Derbies past, her hats had topped the heads of some impressive local celebrities and socialites, and her clients this year included more than one Hollywood personality. Not bad for someone who had only recently started taking her business seriously.

He studied Audrey’s photograph on the Finery website. She was smiling, but her smile in this picture wasn’t anything like the ones he’d seen in the pictures on the photo-sharing website. Something fundamental had left her after her husband’s death. Something had doused her buoyancy and dimmed her light. She was still grieving. Even though three years should provide a person enough time to start coping and at least begin to move forward. Audrey hadn’t moved forward. She still loved her husband the way she had when he was alive. The “ ’til death do us part” segment of the marriage vows obviously hadn’t meant squat to her. Even death hadn’t parted her from her husband.

Then again, he thought further, as he moved his gaze to the word Finery, she referred to herself as Audrey Fine Magill on the website, and she’d called her business Finery, not Magill’s. Maybe there was a part of her that was, subconsciously at least, ready to start identifying with the person she had been before marrying. Maybe.

But it wasn’t up to him to try and figure out Audrey Fine Magill, he reminded himself. After all, they would only be in each other’s lives for a short time. Just long enough for her to help him find his soul and put it back where it belonged.

Because as outrageous, ridiculous, ludicrous, and preposterous, and all those other “ouses” as it seemed, Nathaniel found himself believing what Audrey had told him. That she was being haunted by one of his ancestors. That Nathaniel had lost his soul. That it might be gone forever if he didn’t figure out a way to get it back. As much as he tried to convince himself otherwise, he just couldn’t do it. He’d felt that funny twinge around his heart immediately after signing the contract with Edward, which was what Audrey had told him had caused him to lose his soul in the first place. He was cold all . . . the . . . time, no matter what he did to try and warm himself. Everything she’d said the ghost had told her was true had turned out to be true. He just didn’t believe anymore that Audrey Magill was an attention-seeker or nut job. He believed he had a metaphysical problem on his hand, and she was the physical solution.

Though maybe it would be better if he dwelled more on the
solution
part of that realization and less on the
physical
part of it.

His decision made—well, one decision, anyway—he reached for the phone and began to dial.

 

THE PHONE RANG JUST AS AUDREY WAS TRYING TO
decide what to fix for her dinner. It was after six, and she hadn’t eaten since noon, so her stomach was grumbling for something substantial. But she’d been so busy for the past few weeks, she’d been living mostly on soup and sandwiches, and the thought of having to choose between turkey or roast beef, wheat or rye, tomato basil or corn chowder
again
was in no way appealing. Although she normally loathed being called at the dinner hour, this time it was almost a relief. Closing the refrigerator door, she crossed to the telephone and looked at the number on the caller ID. When the words
Private Caller
appeared without a number to identify them, she did as she always did and let the machine answer for her.

Hello
, her recorded voice said, sounding cool and professional and distant.
You’ve reached 502-555-5831. Leave a message after the tone. Or, if you have business with Finery, please hang up and dial 502-555-5832. Thank you
.

“What a surprise, even your answering machine makes you sound efficient.”

Audrey’s back went up at Nathaniel Summerfield’s voice, though she was surprised to discover that that wasn’t because it was his voice so much as it was that he’d called her efficient, which wasn’t exactly the adjective a woman wanted to have ascribed to herself when the voice ascribing it was dark and velvety and delicious. But then, she
was
efficient, she reminded herself. She’d always considered it a great compliment to be called efficient. And Nathaniel
wasn’t
delicious, she further reminded herself. Only his voice was.

She snatched up the phone and snapped out a hello without thinking, only to be met with silence at the other end. But it was followed a moment later by a wary, “Audrey?” and there was just something in the way he said her name that made all the tension melt inside her. Because it was the same something that had been in his voice earlier in the afternoon when he’d told her not to let go of him, the same something that had made her feel all warm and wistful inside.

“Nathaniel. Hi,” she said, lightening her tone. Before she realized what she was doing, she lifted a hand to her hair to tuck an errant strand behind one ear. Then she cursed herself for doing it, because number one, he couldn’t see how unkempt she was at the moment, and two, she didn’t care if he
did
see her at her most unkempt, and number three, he already
had
seen her looking unkempt, and just because she’d felt frumpy and unattractive at the time didn’t mean anything, and . . . and . . . and . . .

Where was she? Oh, right. Looking unkempt. No, not caring if Nathaniel saw her looking unkempt. Which she didn’t. Right? Right.

“I’m sorry,” she continued, pushing all other thoughts out of her brain before they made her dizzy. “I didn’t mean to snap.” And then, because she couldn’t figure out why she had snapped in the first place, she brushed it off by concluding, “Long day.”

He muttered a sympathetic sound. “Same here. It’s not every day you find out your great-great-God-knows-how-many-greats grandfather, who just so happens to be dead, is telling a strange woman you’ve lost your soul.”

Oh, fine,
Audrey thought. Now he was calling her strange? Oh, wait. Maybe he meant the other kind of strange. Like
stranger
strange. Probably, she told herself, it was better not to ask for clarification. “Does that mean you believe me now?” she asked instead.

He didn’t answer right away, as if he were afraid to speak aloud what he feared to be true. Then, when he finally did reply, it wasn’t to answer the question she asked him, but to pose one of his own. “Have you had dinner yet?”

It was the kind of question that usually prefaced an invitation to go out on a date, and normally, it would have set off all sorts of alarms in Audrey’s head. For some reason, though, the way Nathaniel asked it didn’t put her on alert. In fact, the way he asked it, it didn’t sound like he wanted to ask her out on a date. It just sounded like he wanted to know if she’d had dinner yet.

So, “No,” she told him. “I was just trying to figure out what to fix.”

“Let me,” he began, then hesitated, and for a moment, she actually thought he was offering to come over to her house and fix something for her. Thankfully, though, he continued. “Let me buy you dinner.”

And suddenly, Audrey didn’t feel thankful at all, because he had, in fact, just asked her out on a date, and she hadn’t even seen it coming. Well, okay, she had sort of seen it coming, since he had prefaced the invitation with the sort of question men always used to preface an invitation like that, but even now, she wasn’t feeling all nervous and uncomfortable, the way she usually did when a guy asked her out and she had to turn him down.

And then she realized the reason she didn’t feel all nervous and uncomfortable was because she kind of . . . sort of . . . wanted to . . .