Soldier of Love (9 page)

“More! Yes! More!” she cried.

Her second orgasm transported her. She squeezed her eyes shut and her mind hummed as she tried to sort out the symphony of pleasures that her lovers’ hands and mouths and cocks delivered. John’s hips meet her strokes and his hand wrapped around hers. Toni’s pussy began to spasm. Thomas’ thrusts quickened as he rammed into her. Finally Thomas dealt a bruising lunge and ripped his mouth from hers. He bit the flesh of her shoulder and let out an animalistic growl. Toni felt his cock swell and pulse and when he shot cum deep inside her, she cried out in delicious agony.

When Toni opened her eyes again, she focused on John Buckman’s hand guiding hers as she stroked his hardened rod. He looked down at her, his eyes flashing with lust. He pulled her hand from him, kissed it, then placed it on her own breast. Thomas lifted his head from her shoulder. She glanced at him and it was clear by the look of awe on his face that he could now see John too.

John began stroking his own cock, the tempo of his pumping hand quickening until his fist was a blur. He threw back his head and opened his mouth in a silent moan. Toni watched the ghost writhe silently in the throes of orgasm. It seemed that sparks were bouncing off his skin and the air around him began to glow white. The sparks multiplied until the place where John Buckman stood became a solid ball of white light. The light glowed brighter and the air was filled with an electric hum. The hum increased in pitch and volume until it culminated in a thunderclap that shook the house. The light snuffed out.

Toni knew without a doubt that the ghost of John Buckman no longer resided at the inn.

* * * *

They’d slept for eleven hours and both Toni and Thomas were ravenous. Toni had two frying pans going—one for eggs and one for bacon. She’d dropped English muffins into the toaster and set out butter and jams. Thomas was at the kitchen table staring at the monitor. Toni brought him a cup of coffee.

“Anything?”

Thomas shook his head. “Just static. Whatever Buckman did last night, it fried the cameras and erased the hard drives.”

“I’m sorry,” Toni said, kissing Thomas on the temple before returning to the stove. “I guess the ghost tourists won’t be beating a path to my door.”

“Still, that was pretty amazing, huh?” he asked.

“Incredible,” Toni agreed.

“But what did he mean?”

Toni cocked her head. “What are you talking about?”

“That thing he kept repeating,” Thomas said.

Toni shrugged. “I didn’t hear anything. I’ve never heard him. But you did?”

Thomas nodded.

“What did he say?” Toni asked.

“Something like ‘Watch your step’.”

Toni shook her head and went back to stirring the eggs.

“No,” Thomas said. “It wasn’t, ‘Watch your step’. It was more like, ‘Look at the step’ or…”

Toni stopped stirring the eggs. The spatula fell out of her hand. She pushed the frying pans off the hot burners then yanked open the junk drawer, pulled out a long-handled screwdriver and ran from the kitchen. She heard Thomas’ chair scrape backwards and his bare feet slap against the floor as he ran behind her. Toni stopped at the foot of the staircase and fell to her knees.

“What are you doing?” Thomas asked.

“He wasn’t haunting this place because he wanted to set the record straight about his wartime service. The historians had already done that. He got frustrated when he figured out that I could see him and feel him but I couldn’t hear him, so he made me call you. He must have thought that he’d be able to communicate with you or maybe get picked up on your equipment.”

Thomas looked confused.

Toni wedged the screwdriver into the seam between the bottom stair’s tread and the riser. She pounded it forward with the heel of her hand.

“I’ve tripped over this step a hundred times in the last six months—just this step.”

“‘Look at the step’!” Thomas repeated.

Thomas dropped to his knees beside Toni and pulled upwards on the board while Toni levered with the screwdriver. The board gave way with a creak. Thomas yanked it free and laid it aside. The screwdriver clattered to the floor. The stair tread had served as the lid to the wooden box that was the bottom step.

Toni’s heart boomed as she stared at the treasure that had been under her feet the whole while. She turned to Thomas. His face wore the astonishment that she felt.

The two laughed as they plunged their fingers into the box formed by the bottom step and scooped up handfuls of antique coins.

They both sat back on their heels and wiped their hands on their clothing.

When Toni had caught her breath, she asked, “So, are you still thinking about getting out of the ghost-hunting business?”

Thomas smiled at her. “I can’t believe you found this.”

Toni shook her head. “I never would have if you hadn’t been able to hear Buckman. He did everything he could to show me the hiding place, but I just didn’t get it. Half of this is yours, Thomas.”

“I could produce my own show…do it the right way,” he said, “and with you as the staff medium…”

“I’m sorry…the what?”

Thomas cocked his head and gathered up Toni’s hands in his. “Toni, you realise that Buckman was only able to appear because of you, right? You’re a medium—a conduit between the spirit world and this world.”

“I am?”

Thomas laughed and leaned in to kiss her on the temple. “Yeah, you are, and a pretty freaking strong one at that. If we could just figure out how to capture what you do on tape—without frying the equipment—we could actually prove the existence of ghosts.”

“Would I be able to keep my clothes on next time?” Toni asked with a wink.

“I make no guarantees,” was the last thing Thomas said before covering her mouth with his.

Also available from Total-E-Bound Publishing:

Mr Fix-It

Gabrielle Holly

Excerpt

Chapter One

Deena Stevens stopped brushing her hair in mid-stroke and cocked her head to listen.

THUD! THUD! THUD!

The rhythmic banging was coming from the laundry room.

“Shit! Not again!”

Deena tossed her hairbrush into the open vanity drawer then slid it closed with a smooth swing of her ample hip. Her bare feet slapped on the age-worn oak floor as she ran out of the bathroom, down the hall, across the big country kitchen and into the laundry room.

The 1970s avocado-green washing machine was rocking wildly back and forth; thudding at the apex of each shimmy. Deena flipped open the lid and looked inside the ancient appliance. The rotating drum inside was off kilter, spinning in an oval pattern rather than a circle. As she’d done a hundred times before, Deena waited as the interrupted spin cycle slowed and finally stopped with one last THUD!

Deena was just south of five-foot-four, and had to stand on tiptoe when she leaned over the edge of the machine to get at the load of whites inside. She rearranged the sopping wet bed sheets and ankle socks until they were as balanced as they’d ever get, then dropped the lid closed.

The machine gradually rumbled back to life, spinning slowly at first, then picking up speed. Deena stood back and squinted at the washer. She crossed her arms under her generous breasts, and bit her lower lip. She didn’t take her eyes off the ‘Avocado Beast’ until the spin cycle was whirring away at full speed and it was clear that the cantankerous old machine wasn’t going to go walking out of the laundry room.

Satisfied that the spin cycle was going to be completed without further drama, Deena stepped back into the kitchen. She supposed she should finish getting ready before the phone rang.

Deena had barely finished the thought when a slightly robotic version of Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ blasted out of her cell phone. She glanced at the phone sitting on its charger on the gleaming granite countertop, then up at the clock over the big stainless steel restaurant-grade range. She registered the time in her mind, then looked back at her ringing phone.

“Shit. Shit. Shit,” Deena muttered.

She took a deep breath, pulled her cell from the charger and swept her finger over the touch screen to answer the call. She didn’t have to look at the Caller ID, or the photo of the fashion-model-perfect face that popped up on the screen, to know who was calling.

“Hey, Suzanne. I know I’m late. Be there in ten…”

Deena rolled her eyes and held the phone a few inches from her ear as Suzanne Flowers launched into her rant without bothering with ‘hellos’.

“Are you always late or are you just operating on special ‘Deena time’? No one else seems to have any trouble getting here by eight, and everyone is pretty sick and tired of waiting around for you. I mean, really, how hard is it to—”

Deena put the phone down on the enormous antique farm table that filled the centre of the kitchen. She knew that Suzanne would continue with her tirade, whether or not Deena was actually listening.

Deena had heard the same lecture at least a dozen times over the past four years. That’s when Suzanne and a whole gaggle of other ‘Barbie wives’ had become her neighbours. Six years ago, she’d sold off some of her inherited family farmland for a new high-end housing development. Gigantic homes had begun popping up on the rolling landscape and had been almost instantly snapped up by folks with lots of money and, with a few exceptions, very little depth.

Sooner or later nearly every member of the Botox Brigade had made her way over to Deena’s big, white farmhouse, drawn in by the folksy hand-painted wood sign at the end of her driveway that promised organic produce and free-range eggs. She loved the irony of women who would willingly implant silicone, and other synthetic plumping agents, into their bodies, then worry about a little fertiliser on their snap peas.

Most often the women would fill their over-priced, limited edition woven baskets with organic goodies, then hurry back down the road. Sometimes, however, they would linger and chat. They would sit at the big farm table and sip rich, strong coffee (no sugar, ever, but occasionally a splash of cream…as long as it was real cream with absolutely no carbs). Deena was fascinated by how the women would visibly relax after just a few minutes in her kitchen. She supposed that they didn’t have anything to prove when they were away from the rest of the plastic herd. Surely her easy, earthy style threatened no one in that group. She wore her long, wavy hair loose, never bothering to blow it out or iron it straight. She had an unfashionably full figure, and favoured flowing natural-fibre clothes.

Deena definitely did not fit in. In spite of this, or maybe because of it, she had been invited to join their little book club, the book club that she had, once again, kept waiting. Deena knew, without being told explicitly, that from the beginning Suzanne had been reluctant to include her. Suzanne hosted all of the meetings and organised them like she organised the rest of her life, as if staged for a photo shoot. The charter members of the book club were all cut from the same designer cloth. Deena knew that she definitely upset that balance. She glanced at the clock again and wondered if her seemingly pathologic inability to be punctual for the meetings was in fact a passive-aggressive poke at Suzanne’s sense of order.

Suzanne was still scolding Deena’s tardiness when she picked up her cell phone and dropped it into her big, fringed leather purse with this month’s assigned book. Slinging her purse over her shoulder, Deena could still make out Suzanne’s muffled voice. She slid on her sandals, grabbed a plate of cookies (which no one would eat) and pulled a bottle of wine (which everyone would drink) from the rack and hurried out of her back door.

Deena crossed her side yard into Suzanne’s backyard. Through the double French doors, she could see the women gathered around Suzanne’s huge kitchen island. Suzanne had her cell phone to her ear and one hand on her boyishly narrow hip. Deena was sure that, if Suzanne had been able to wrinkle her forehead, she would have.

Deena tucked the wine bottle under one arm and balanced the cookie plate while she fished into her bag for her cell phone.

“I’m walking out the door right now, Suzanne,” she said into the phone before ending the connection.

Deena paused at the bottom step of Suzanne’s back deck and peered into the kitchen as if watching a movie unfold on a drive-in movie screen. She noticed that the Botox Brigade was even more done up than usual. Freshly flat-ironed hair gleamed, gaudy jewellery sparkled and preternaturally smooth skin was painted to perfection. At least six of the eight book clubbers inside had chosen plunging necklines to show off their synthetic cleavages. Several of them were huddled in a conspiratorial whisper that dissolved into schoolgirl giggles.

What are they up to?

She crossed the big deck and pushed open the French door. She entered the huge kitchen, where she knew few meals were actually cooked, and her nose was assaulted by a cloud of intermixed designer perfumes. She pushed the door shut with her round bottom and placed the plate of cookies and bottle of wine in the centre of the island.

Suzanne tossed her cell phone on the counter beside her ridiculously huge pink and purple designer bag, and planted both hands on her hips. “Well, I guess we can get started now that our perpetually late neighbour has graced us with her presence.”

Deena dropped her purse on an empty barstool, pulled the plastic wrap from the plate, snagged a homemade oatmeal raisin cookie and pointed it towards her hostess. “Please, Suzanne. We all know that I’m the only one who actually read the book.”

Deena winked and took a big, chewy bite. Her mouth was full when the door to the powder room swung open and she saw the reason for all the primping and giggling.

An enormous man, nearly a full foot taller than Deena herself, stepped into the kitchen. His deep tan stood out against a tight, sky-blue T-shirt that was just a shade lighter than his eyes. His longish, tousled, sandy hair was streaked with sun-bleached strands. He held a battered, red, metal toolbox in one big hand and extended his other towards Suzanne. She reached out and he dropped a pea-sized diamond earring into her upturned palm.