A Date with the Other Side (Cuttersville #1)(3)
Author: Erin McCarthy

Understanding dawned. She nodded. “Oh, I get it. Your mom got pregnant there, didn’t she?”

Boston didn’t know that for a fact, since he had never once felt the urge to get confirmation from his mother about it, but he did know he was born nine months after their wedding. But the way Shelby said it made it seem . . . vulgar.

“I have no idea,” he said flatly, feeling that she had distinctly worn out her welcome in his bedroom.

“Because you know that’s how Chevy Danforth got his name and Harley Johnson got his.”

Now there was a visual he didn’t need.

“Oh, and Abigail Murphy.”

Boston pondered that one for a second, but couldn’t draw any conclusions from it. He shouldn’t ask. “How is that?”

“Because that was the name on the headstone of the grave she was conceived on.”

He’d had to ask.

Turning, pillow still protecting him, he dropped his feet to the floor. “Well, as charming as this conversation is, I’d appreciate some privacy now, Shelby.”

“Sure.” She nodded and backed up toward the door. “I’ll see you at eleven, then.”

He froze on the bed. “Why? What’s at eleven?” He had every intention of staying far away from Shelby Tucker, her perky br**sts, and her slightly scary speech patterns.

“That’s when the first tour runs. Then at five, I have a seniors’ group from Warren coming.”

Boston was starting to get the feeling that maybe Shelby was being paid money to annoy him. She was just too good at it.

“I told you quite specifically that you’ll have to take this house off the tour. I rented it for three months and no one is setting foot in here but me.”

Shelby didn’t look impressed. “I’ll be here at eleven.”

“I’m going to call Mrs. Stritmeyer. This is ludicrous!”

Shelby turned the brass doorknob. “You can call Gran, but I happen to know for a fact that she writes it into every lease that you grant permission to allow this room to be viewed on the tour.”

Boston’s mouth fell clear down to his chest. “That’s impossible. I read the lease.”

Shelby gave him a grin and a wave. “There’s always the fine print, Mr. Boston. Bye, now.”

The second the door closed, Boston dove for his discarded clothes, afraid she’d come back and he’d have one foot in and one foot out, further humiliating himself. Underwear secure, he paced back and forth in front of the four-poster bed in his black boxers.

There were only two possible explanations for what had just happened.

He was either the victim of an elaborate reality show joke, or his life was about to take a serious downhill Shelby Tucker-filled slide.

Chapter Two

“Gran, is there something you forgot to mention to me?” Shelby fixed her grandmother with a stern look after kissing her on the cheek.

Gran was having breakfast on her wide front porch, digging around her plate with a fork and an expression of disdain. “This fruit salad is old. That deli at the grocery is going to hear from me. That’s what happens when these big stores take over and you lose the personal touch.”

Shelby agreed, and normally didn’t mind her grandmother saying her piece. But today Shelby wanted to hear about Boston Macnamara in the blue bedroom.

“Forget the fruit salad, Gran, there was a naked man in the White House.” Shelby sat down in the wicker chair opposite Gran and kicked off her sandals.

Her grandmother owned half a dozen properties around Cuttersville, each at least fifty years old, all haunted, or so people said. Gran referred to each house by the color of their exterior paint. The one Boston Macnamara was staying in was a white Victorian with black shutters, and was known to everyone in town as Mrs. Stritmeyer’s White House.

Putting her fork down, Gran gave her an amused look. At seventy, Gran was slowing down a bit, but she still managed her properties herself and was sharp as a tack. She was wearing capri pants and a coral sleeveless top, which Shelby realized made her own grandmother actually appear more stylish than she did. She had a bad habit of just pulling on whatever was clean and sitting on the top in her drawer.

“Shelby, I thought you said you never see ghosts.”

“I don’t.” That was probably the only reason she could do the job she did every day, guiding tours through Cuttersville’s myriad haunted houses. In three years, she’d never once seen a single ghost, heard a single sound that wasn’t explainable, or felt a cold spell. Lights never flickered and vapor never flowed past her.

Shelby was solidly in the real world and couldn’t count the number of times others had claimed to be experiencing a supernatural phenomenon standing right next to her while she saw diddly-squat. Sometimes she thought it was all a lot of bunk, and other times she was damn jealous. What was the matter with her that no ghost wanted to show her a spectral face and plead for justice?

Except for an hour ago. She’d heard that doorknob jiggle. Of course, that had to have been Brady, acting like an ass, as he was known to do.

Gran speared a melon. “Then how did you see the Old Colonel if you don’t see ghosts?”

“I don’t know who the Old Colonel is, but the guy I saw was not old, most certainly not dead, and he was sleeping in the blue bedroom.”

Naked.

Gran looked surprised. “You mean I never told you about the Old Colonel? He sunbathes in the nude. You’ll have to add that to the tour, it’s so eccentric. And folks just love eccentric.”

Shelby didn’t give a rat’s hooey about the Old Colonel, though she hoped if a ghost did ever decide to show himself to her, it wouldn’t be to flash her.

“I’m talking about Boston Macnamara. You know, you might have told me you let the house before I walked in on the man stark naked.” Not that she regretted it, but Gran didn’t need to know that.

Gran crossed her little white sneakers at the ankle. “Lucky you.”

Shelby laughed. “Don’t let Mom hear you say stuff like that, she’ll flip out.”

Gran snorted. “Your mother’s had about twelve boyfriends since your father left. She has no business going prude on me. And I really do think you’re a lucky thing to have seen that man without any clothes on.”

“Gran!” Shelby laughed. “Behave.”

Gran just smiled, her hand coming up to pat her straw-colored hair, trimmed short and framing her face in a cute modern cut. Shelby thought about her own hair, all eight hundred pounds of it, parked on top of her head like a brown octopus. Maybe she ought to think about getting a trim, if her own gran looked better than she did.