A Date with the Other Side (Cuttersville #1)(12)
Author: Erin McCarthy

Shelby shook her head. “No. She picked up a candlestick and bludgeoned him to death right on the spot while the maid stood there and just screamed like a ninny.”

Despite his best efforts to remain cynical, a shiver raced up his spine. If he believed in ghosts, which he didn’t, he might be a little alarmed to share space with Rachel, the candlestick-crazed ghost. “Holy shit. Don’t mess with Rachel, huh?”

He preferred the image of a young woman reclining on a couch, sniffling into her handkerchief and sinking into spinsterhood, over the idea of some poor guy getting whacked in the parlor. The parlor he was currently trapped in.

“They locked her up, of course, and her parents sold the house and moved to Marietta to escape the scandal. But Rachel overdosed on opium in the nuthouse and since then has been seen from time to time moving back and forth in this room and waiting at the window, searching for her long-lost lover.”

Shelby was good at telling the tale. Her eyes had grown wide, her head moved up and down in reassurance from time to time, and she paused for effect at just the right spots. It was obviously a speech from her tour. Which made it dismissible.

Except that a lamp had levitated and tried to take a piece out of his head. “So, you think it’s Rachel getting riled up? Has she thrown things before?”

It took a lot of effort not to turn and make sure the lamp wasn’t leaping at him again.

Shelby rubbed her arms, goose bumps racing across her golden skin. “Only once that I know of. But she walks back and forth, loud footsteps and cold air, when men are in the room. Men she doesn’t like.”

His ego was taking quite a beating today. Not a single soul in Cuttersville, living or dead, seemed to like him. “Why doesn’t she like me? Do I look like the cheating fiancé?”

With a shrug, Shelby stepped forward, glancing around the room as if Rachel might be watching. She whispered, “Maybe she didn’t like what you were doing. How close you were sitting to me. Maybe when you gave me the candy, she thought it was—”

“Inappropriate?” he provided, logic overcoming fear. There was no way a ghost could throw a lamp at him. No way. It must have been a draft or an electrical surge or something.

“Uh-huh.”

She nodded, looking warm and soft and very, very close, her shiny moist mouth parted just a little, her br**sts dangerously close to his chest. A little shift, a little turn, and they could share a cherry Life Saver again.

“Did you think it was inappropriate?”

“No.” Her expressive brown eyes had flecks of gold in them, and as she spoke, they dropped level with his own mouth. “It was probably the best way to do it. If you had taken the candy out and tried to hand it to me, we might have dropped it. You were being cautious, right?”

Caution. Yeah, that’s what was driving him.

“Right.” Boston touched a wisp of hair that was falling across her cheek and wrapped it around his finger. “And I also wanted to see if maybe, just maybe, you were even the slightest bit attracted to me like I am to you.”

She licked her lips. “I do feel a small attraction to you.”

They were touching now, and Boston wasn’t sure who had leaned in first. He just knew that her br**sts were resting up along his chest and her mouth was close enough to his that he felt her breath caress his lip. Her hair tickled his cheek, and he could smell the cherry, musky, floral scent of her.

“How small?”

“Smaller than an ant’s butt.”

“That’s small,” he said, even as he tilted, heading toward her lips.

“Very small,” she agreed, eyes drifting closed.

Pounding on the window scared the crap out of him and sent Shelby leaping three feet back. Half of his brain panicked as he turned, expecting to see a ghost with a candlestick bearing down on him; the other half moaned at the injustice of the timing.

That half actually groaned out loud when Boston saw a man in a CFD baseball cap peering in the window curiously.

“They take an hour, then show up now?” he asked wryly as Shelby ran toward the window, all thoughts of attraction apparently abandoned.

Shelby yelled, “The door won’t open and the windows are all stuck, Howie. Try and open it.”

Howie, who didn’t look like a deep thinker on his sharpest day, lifted his hat and scratched his prematurely balding head. “Shelby, I’m trying and it won’t budge.” He tugged again while balancing on a ladder. “And your gran says I can’t use a crowbar, it might break the window.”

“I’ll pay for the window,” Boston said, thinking it wasn’t really his responsibility but he needed to leave this parlor sooner or later. Not that anyone was listening to him. Howie probably couldn’t hear him and Shelby ignored him, giving a sound of disgust.

Heads popped up in two other windows. One was a thin guy wearing a blue Cuttersville Fire Department T-shirt, and the third was Farmer Ted, Shelby’s ex-husband. Which seriously annoyed him. Especially when Shelby raced past the second window and Boston like he and cherry Life Savers had never existed, and gripped the frame, hugging her body against the pane of glass and, in effect, her ex-husband.

“Oh, Danny, thank God. Get me the hell out of here.”

Boston found himself rolling his eyes. She didn’t have to act like she was being tortured. Nor did he think it was anything less than disgusting when Danny Tucker touched the glass with a finger, mocking a caress. Didn’t the guy have a field to plow or something?

“Shh. I’m here, darlin’. Are you okay?”

Shelby nodded. “I’m fine.”

“Alright, back up then. Keep going,” he urged when Shelby took only a step or two.

Still balancing on the ladder, the guy peeled off his T-shirt, revealing a chest twice as wide as Boston’s and sporting a full six-pack. Boston tried to gauge Shelby’s reaction to Stud Boy over there, but she looked nothing more than faintly worried, her arms crossed.

“What are you going to do?”

Danny wrapped his shirt around his hand and rammed it through the window. When the sound of shattering glass abated, he winked at her. “Break the window.”

Boston fumed, irrational fury and jealousy rising in his gut. Damn it, but that made him look stupid. Like he wasn’t man enough to just break the window and get Shelby out. He had been polite. Waiting for the fire department, following the proper channels. And instead of looking considerate and professional, he looked like a pansy.