A Date with the Other Side (Cuttersville #1)(52)
Author: Erin McCarthy

“I don’t think you’re selfish, I think you’re needy. We put up these walls, defense mechanisms, and have standards that no one could ever possibly meet.”

“What are you, my conscience?” he asked, determined to ignore that Amanda might actually be on to something.

“Your guardian angel, I think.” She gave him a dimpled smile.

“More like the devil,” he grumbled, rubbing his chest with his fist. He really did have a pain there, like he’d eaten overly spicy Mexican.

“No! The devil wears Prada.” Amanda laughed. “This is Juicy Couture.”

He rolled his eyes, amused in spite of himself. “Amanda Delmar, I do believe that your father is doing you a disservice. You have the logic of an attorney and the legs of a supermodel. You’re Brett’s untapped asset.”

“And will remain that way,” she said, all traces of amusement gone. “He sees what he wants to see.”

Boston fell back onto the porch and stared up at the wooden boards of the ceiling. “I thought that by the time I reached thirty-two, I would have figured it all out. I think I was more confident at twenty than I am now.”

“God, don’t tell me that! I’m only twenty-five and I don’t think I can get any more aimless than I already am.”

He turned his head on his side and grinned. “That would be difficult.”

Amanda stuck her tongue out at him and laughed.

Chapter Sixteen

Saturday the TV crews showed up.

Gran warned her, having fielded the phone call from the television station as the owner of the White House. They were on their way to conduct interviews and shoot footage.

Shelby ran, her gym shoes pounding the gravel harder than they had since high school track, but when she turned the corner, sweaty and out of breath, she saw she was too late. A van was in the drive, and Boston was on the porch waving his hands at the crew, looking ticked off.

Retreating would be cowardly. She only considered it for a split second. Especially since he glanced up and saw her. She offered a tentative smile and a shrug.

Lord only knew who had called the news. It certainly hadn’t been her. But given the way gossip about the Gone With the Wind plates attacking her and Boston had ripped through town, it could have been just about anyone.

Surreptitiously wiping the perspiration off her forehead, Shelby glanced down at her outfit. It revealed to her exactly what she had expected. She looked like a slob in denim shorts and a T-shirt she’d gotten for participating in the March of Dimes. In 1997.

You wouldn’t think it would be hard to take herself to the mall and just pick out a few casual, comfortable, yet moderately stylish outfits. It seemed that it was, however, because she hadn’t, and here she was again, looking like a neglected stepchild.

Boston wasn’t announcing her presence. In fact, he seemed to be gesturing for her to take off running, if she wanted. His head kept tilting to the side as he met her eyes. Coward though she was, she couldn’t do that to him. She’d brought him more aggravation than one man should have to endure over the last three weeks, including being so monumentally stupid as to sleep with him and then suggest it was a bad idea.

Yet he still protected her.

She cleared her throat and walked right up to the porch, weaving her way through the two cameramen and stopping behind a woman wearing a floral skirt and peach sleeveless shirt. “Excuse me. I’m Shelby Tucker, the tour guide for the Haunted Cuttersville Tour, and my grandmother owns this house. Can I help you?”

The woman turned so fast Shelby feared her head might spin off. “I’m Adrienne Ashley, Channel Five Action News.”

She put her hand out and Shelby took it.

Adrienne Ashley gave her hand one good pump, then abandoned it. “We would like to conduct a series of interviews with the people who witnessed the ghost sighting, run some footage of the house, that sort of thing, but Mr. Macnamara doesn’t seem interested in cooperating.”

Red lips pursed and her dark blond helmet hair deigned to shudder in disapproval.

Boston rubbed his jaw. “I wasn’t going to do anything without Shelby’s permission. It’s up to her.”

Shelby paused to wonder how he’d spent his day off. With Amanda? Working? She didn’t even know what he liked to do in his free time, and that made her feel her decision to stop seeing him was the right one. They didn’t really know each other at all.

But they could have. And they did, in the ways that mattered.

Shelby shut up her inner dialogue and tried to focus on Adrienne Ashley’s long self-important nose. “Well, Ms. Ashley, I don’t know.”

Now that sounded intelligent. But for the life of her, she couldn’t decide if it would be a good thing or a bad thing to have the White House immortalized on the eleven o’clock news. Likely, it would just embarrass them all.

Or it could bring business—big business. When Boston moved out, Gran could convert the house into a bed-and-breakfast.

Her answer didn’t please the reporter, especially not when Boston nudged around her and picked up Shelby’s injured hand. “How are you feeling today? Did you take a pain pill?”

He inspected her like he was waiting for her to puddle on the ground again.

“I’m fine, thanks. It doesn’t even hurt.” And she regretted that she’d been such a weenie about the whole thing the night before. It had made it all that much harder to stick to her guns and tell Boston they couldn’t see each other. When he’d stared at her in that hospital ER, his eyes the most delicious rich blue, and looked at her like he wanted to sweep her off to a deserted island and worship at her feet, well, she’d been sorely tempted.

“If you want to do the story, I don’t mind,” he said in a low voice. “I want whatever you want.”

She wanted him, darn it all to hell and back again.

But that wouldn’t pay the bills or pop a bun in her oven, and she was first and foremost a practical person. “It makes sense to do the story. More business.”

He nodded. “That’s what I would do.”

She was probably going to regret this, but then what was life for but regrets? Shelby made no effort to remove her hand from Boston’s as she called for the reporter, who was impatiently pacing the porch. Her professional smile had warped into a gritted lip pull.

“What exactly did you have in mind?” Shelby asked.

“I want to interview everyone who was here yesterday who’s willing to talk on camera. I want to tape myself walking through the home, and I’d really like to have a ghost expert come into the house and make an assessment.”