Dream Lake

  But somehow Mark and Sam had managed to make room in their lives for a six-year-old girl, and that act of compassion had changed everything. The junk-food-loving bachelors had started to read nutrition labels as if it were a matter of life or death. If they couldn’t pronounce an ingredient, it was banned. They learned new words like “rickets” and “rotavirus,” and the names of at least a half-dozen Disney princesses, and how to use peanut butter to remove a wad of gum from long hair.

  Before long, the brothers discovered that when you opened your heart to a child, it also left you open to other people. In the year after Holly had first come to live with them, Mark fell in love with a red-haired young widow named Maggie, and all his long-held prejudices against the idea of marriage collapsed like wet toast. After the August wedding, Mark, Maggie, and Holly would live in their own house on the island, and Sam would have Rainshadow Road back to himself again.

  It seemed only a matter of time before Sam, too, would decide to take a chance on love. His fears were understandable—the Nolan parents, Jessica and Alan, had demonstrated to their four children that the seeds of failure and destruction were sown at the beginning of every relationship. If you loved someone, sooner or later you would reap a bitter harvest.

  After a nasty legal battle, Alex and Darcy had agreed on terms that would allow their legal separation to be converted to a divorce. She cleaned him out financially, winning most of their assets, including the house. At the same time, the economy took a downturn and the real estate market plummeted. The bank had foreclosed on Alex’s Roche Harbor development, and put his plans for developing property at Dream Lake on indefinite hold.

  Alex drank until he had acquired the young-old look of someone burning out too early. He wanted numbness. Oblivion. The ghost could only surmise that as the youngest child of alcoholic parents, Alex’s survival had depended on detachment. If you never felt anything or trusted anyone, if you denied every need or weakness, you couldn’t be hurt.

  Every day eroded Alex a little more. How much longer, the ghost wondered, before there was nothing left of him?

  With his Roche Harbor project gone and his other development at a standstill, Alex spent most of his time working on the vineyard house at Rainshadow Road. Some of the rooms had been so damaged by water leaks that he’d had to gut and rebuild them, starting with new subflooring. Recently he’d installed silk-screened reproduction wallpaper in the living room, after hand-cutting the panels and border from a master roll. Although Sam had tried to pay Alex for the work, Alex had refused. He knew his brothers didn’t understand why he’d taken such an interest in the place. Mostly it was to assuage his conscience—or what was left of it—over not having volunteered in the past to help raise Holly. There was no way in hell Alex was going to have anything to do with taking care of a child. However, making the house safe and comfortable while she lived there was something he could do, something he was good at.

  It was midsummer, and the crew at Rainshadow vineyard was busy tending the vines and pruning leaves to expose more of the ripening grapes to the sun. Alex arrived in the morning to do some work in the attic. Before heading upstairs, he went to the kitchen with Sam for some coffee.

  Scents of the previous evening’s meal—chicken soup flavored with sage—lingered in the air, subtle but comforting. An antique glass bell jar covered a pale wedge of cheese on the counter.

  “Al, why don’t you let me fry you a couple of eggs before you start working?” Sam asked.

  Alex shook his head. “Not hungry. Just want coffee.”

  “Okay. By the way … I’d appreciate it if you’d keep the noise level down today. I’ve got a friend staying here, and she needs rest.”

  Alex scowled. “Tell her to take her hangover somewhere else. I have some trim work to do.”

  “Do it later,” Sam said. “And it’s not a hangover. She was in an accident yesterday.”

  Before Alex could reply, the doorbell rang. It was one of those old-fashioned rotary mechanical bells that worked with a turnkey.

  “That’s probably one of her friends,” Sam muttered. “Try not to be a dick, Alex.”

  In a couple of minutes, Sam brought a woman into the kitchen.

  Alex understood in a flash that he was in trouble, a kind he’d never experienced before. One look into a pair of round blue eyes, and it was a knockout punch, an instant defeat. Alarm and desire froze him where he stood. “Zoë Hoffman, this is my brother Alex,” he heard Sam say.

  He couldn’t look away, could only respond with a surly nod when she said hello. He made no move to shake hands—it would have been a mistake to touch her.

  She was like something out of a vintage magazine ad, a blond pinup girl with hair bouncing in every-which-way curls. Nature had been spendthrift with her, bestowing more beauty than one person was meant to have. But she stood with the vaguely apologetic posture of a woman who’d always received the wrong kind of attention from men.

  Zoë turned to Sam. “Do you happen to have a cake plate I could set these muffins on?” Her voice was soft and breathy, as if she’d woken up late after a long night of sex.

  “It’s in one of those cabinets near the Sub-Zero. Alex, would you help her out while I go upstairs to get Lucy?” Sam glanced at Zoë. “I’ll find out if she wants to sit in the living room down here, or visit with you upstairs.”

  “Of course,” Zoë said, and went to the cabinets.

  The prospect of being alone with Zoë Hoffman for any length of time, even a minute, gave Alex the alarmed impetus to move. He reached the doorway just as Sam did. He lowered his voice just a shade. “I’ve got stuff to do. I don’t have time to spend chitchatting with Betty Boop.”

  Zoë’s shoulders stiffened.

  “Al,” Sam muttered, “just help her find the damn plate.”

  After Sam left, Alex approached Zoë, who was straining to reach a glass-domed plate on a cabinet shelf. Standing behind her, he caught the fragrance of female skin dusted with talcum. A wave of longing came over him, raw and visceral. Wordlessly he got the plate for her and set it on the granite countertop, his movements dreamlike in their discipline. If he relinquished his control for even one second, he was afraid of what he might do or say.

  Zoë began to transfer the muffins from the pan. Alex stayed beside her, his hand braced on the counter.

  “You can go now,” Zoë murmured, her chin angled down. “You don’t have to stay and chitchat.”

  Hearing the reproachful echo of his earlier words, Alex knew that he should apologize. The thought evaporated as he watched the way her fingers shaped around each muffin, gently lifting them from the pan.

  Saliva spiked in his mouth.

  “What did you put in those?” he managed to ask.

  “Blueberries,” Zoë said. “Help yourself, if you’d like one.”

  Alex shook his head and reached blindly for his coffee. His hand wasn’t quite steady.

  Without looking at him, Zoë took a muffin and set it on Alex’s empty saucer.

  Alex was still and silent, while Zoë continued to arrange the plate. Before he could stop himself, he reached for the offering, his fingers denting the soft shape in its unbleached parchment liner, and he left the kitchen.

  Alone on the front porch, Alex looked down at the muffin. It wasn’t the kind of food that usually appealed to him. Baked goods usually reminded him of drywall.

  The first bite was light and tender, a crisp dissolve of streusel on pillowy cake. His tongue encountered the tang of orange zest and the dark liquid zing of blueberries. Each bite brought a new shock of sweetness. He forced himself to eat with restraint, to keep from wolfing it down. How long had it been since he’d really tasted anything?

  After he’d finished, he sat quietly, letting the sensation of warmth take hold. He let himself think about the woman in the kitchen. The blue eyes, the light curls, the face as feminine and rosy as an old-fashioned valentine. He resented his reaction to her, the contact high that lingered unforgivabl
y.

  She wasn’t the kind of woman he had ever wanted before. No one took a woman like that seriously.

  Zoë.

  You couldn’t say her name without making the shape of a kiss.

  His thoughts collected into a fantasy, one in which he went back to Zoë, apologized for his rudeness, charmed her into going out with him. They would go on a picnic on his property near Dream Lake … he would spread a blanket beneath the cover of wild apple trees, and the sun would filter through the leaves and dapple her skin with brightness.

  He imagined himself undressing her slowly, revealing extravagant pale curves. He would nuzzle into the arc of her neck and tease shivers from her body … taste her blushes with his tongue …

  Alex cleared the thoughts with a rough shake of his head. He took a deep breath, and another.

  He didn’t go back to the kitchen. He slunk upstairs to work in the attic, taking care to avoid another encounter with Zoë Hoffman. Every step was an act of will. He wouldn’t allow himself weakness of any kind.

  Although he hadn’t been able to read Alex’s thoughts as he had sat on the front porch, the ghost had felt them. Finally, here was something Alex wanted, so much that his desire had thickened the air like boiling sugar. It was the most human reaction the ghost had ever seen from him.

  But at the moment Alex decided to walk away from Zoë precisely because he wanted her, the ghost had had enough. He’d been patient for an eternity, and it wasn’t doing anyone any good. Not himself, not Alex. They were getting nowhere. For all that the ghost didn’t know about his predicament—about how and why he’d become the constant companion of an alcoholic engaged in slow suicide—it was pretty obvious that he’d been stuck with Alex for a reason.

  If he were ever going to be free of the bastard, he would have to do something.

  The attic was a large space with slanted ceilings and dormer windows. At some point knee walls had been installed in an attempt to make the space livable, but they were poorly built and drafty. Alex was in the process of fitting rigid foam insulation over the floor joists and caulking it.

  Sitting on his heels, he began to replace the silicone cartridge of the caulking gun. He went still as he saw something on the wall … the dark hieroglyph of a shadow rising from a heap of debris and broken furniture.

  The shadow had been with him for weeks now. Alex had tried to ignore it, tried to drink it away, sleep it away, but there was no escaping its watchful presence. Lately he’d begun to feel a sense of animosity coming from it. Which meant he was either crazy … or haunted.

  As the shadow drew closer to him, Alex felt the cold sear of adrenaline in every vein. Purely by instinct, he moved to defend himself. In an explosive motion, he threw the caulk gun. The tube split, white silicone splattering over the wall.

  The dark shape promptly disappeared.

  Alex still felt the hostile presence nearby, waiting and watching. “I know you’re there,” he said, his voice guttural. “Tell me what you want.” A mist of sweat broke out on his face and collected beneath his T-shirt. His heartbeat was fast and ragged. “And then tell me how to fucking get rid of you.”

  More silence.

  Dust motes salted the air in a slow descent.

  The shadow returned. Quietly it assumed the form of a man. A vivid, three-dimensional being.

  “I’ve been wondering the same thing,” the stranger said. “How to get rid of you, that is.”

  Alex felt his color drain. He moved to sit fully on the floor, to keep from toppling over like a domino.

  My God, I have gone crazy.

  He didn’t realize he’d said it aloud until the stranger replied.

  “No, you haven’t. I’m real.”

  The man was tall, lanky, dressed in a scuffed leather flight jacket and khakis. His black hair was military-short and parted on the side, his features decisively formed, the eyes dark and assessing. He looked like some supporting character in a John Wayne movie, the rebellious hotshot who had to learn to follow orders.

  “Hiya,” the stranger said casually.

  Slowly Alex got to his feet, his balance shoddy. He had never been a spiritual man. He trusted only in concrete things, the evidence of his senses. Everything on earth was made of elements that had originally been produced from exploding stars, which meant humans were basically sapient stardust.

  And when you died, you disappeared forever.

  So … what was this?

  A delusion of some kind. Moving forward, Alex reached out in a tentative gesture. His hand went right through the man’s chest. For a moment all Alex could see was his own wrist embedded in the region of a stranger’s solar plexus.

  “Jesus!” Alex snatched his hand back quickly and examined it, palm up, palm down.

  “You can’t hurt me,” the man said in a matter-of-fact voice. “You’ve walked right through me about a hundred times before.”

  Experimentally Alex extended his hand and swiped it through the man’s arm and shoulder. “What are you?” he managed to ask. “An angel? A ghost?”

  “Do you see any wings?” the man asked sardonically.

  “No.”

  “Didn’t think so. I’d say I was a ghost.”

  “Why are you here? Why have you been following me?”

  The dark gaze met his directly. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t have some kind of message for me? Some unfinished business I’m supposed to help you with?”

  “Nope.”

  Alex wanted very much to believe it was a dream. But it felt too real, the stale warmth of the attic air, the dusty lemon-colored light coming through the windows, the caulking chemicals that always smelled a little like bananas. “What about leaving me the hell alone?” he eventually asked. “Is that an option?”

  The ghost gave him a glance of purest exasperation. “I wish I could,” he said feelingly. “It’s not my idea of entertainment to watch you get sloppy on a fifth of Jack Daniel’s every night. I’ve been bored out of my gourd for months. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I was happier living here with Sam.”

  “You …” Alex made his way to a nearby stack of flooring planks and sat heavily. He kept his gaze on the ghost. “Does Sam—”

  “No. So far, you’re the only one who can see or hear me.”

  “Why?” Alex demanded in outrage. “Why me?”

  “Wasn’t my choice. I was trapped here for a long time. Even after Sam bought the house, I couldn’t leave, no matter how I tried. Then back in April, I found out I could follow you outside, so I did. At first it was a relief. I was glad to get out of here, even if it meant I had to tag along with you. The problem is, I’m shackled to you. I go where you go.”

  “There’s got to be a way to get rid of you,” Alex muttered, rubbing his face with his hands. “Therapy. Medication. An exorcist. A lobotomy.”

  “What I think—” the ghost began, but stopped at the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs.

  “Al?” came Sam’s muffled voice. His head appeared as he approached the top of the staircase, his scowl arrowing through the cream-painted spindles of the balustrade. Pausing at the top, he rested a hand over the top newel and asked curtly, “What’s going on?”

  Glancing from his brother to the ghost, who was standing only a few feet away from him, Alex was tempted to ask Sam if he could see him. The ghost was human and solid and so absolutely there that it seemed impossible for Sam not to notice him.

  “I wouldn’t,” the ghost said, as if reading his thoughts. “Because Sam can’t see me, and you’re going to look crazy. And I’m not all that keen on the idea of sharing a padded cell with you.”

  Alex dragged his gaze back to Sam. “Nothing,” he said in answer to Sam’s question. “Why are you up here?”

  “Because I heard you.” An irritable pause. “I asked you to keep it down, remember? My friend Lucy is resting. What were you shouting for?”

  “I was talking on the cell phone.”

  “Well, yo
u should probably go. Lucy needs peace and quiet.”

  “I’m right in the middle of fixing your damn attic for free, Sam. Why don’t you ask your girlfriend to postpone her nap until I’m finished?”

  Sam gave him a hard warning glance. “She was sideswiped by a car while she was riding her bike yesterday. Even you should have a little sympathy for that. So while an injured woman is trying to heal up in my house—”

  “Okay. Keep your shirt on. I’m leaving.” Alex’s eyes narrowed as he stared at his brother. Sam never lost his cool over a woman. And come to think of it, Sam never allowed any of his girlfriends to stay at the house overnight. Something unusual was going on with this one.

  “Yes, he’s falling for her,” the ghost said from behind him.

  Alex glanced over his shoulder. Before he thought about it, he asked, “Can you read my mind?”

  “What?” Sam asked in bewilderment.

  Alex felt his face heat with embarrassment. “Nothing.”

  “The answer is no,” Sam said. “And I’m glad. Because it would probably scare me to know your thoughts.”

  Alex turned to start packing away his tools. “You have no idea,” he said gruffly.

  Sam began to descend the stairs, then paused. “One more thing—why is there caulk splattered all over the wall?”

  “It’s a new application method,” Alex snapped.

  “Right,” Sam said with a little snort, and left.

  Alex turned to the ghost, who was watching him with a smart-alecky smile.

  “I can’t read your mind,” the ghost said. “But it’s not tough to guess what you’re thinking. Most of the time.” His gaze turned speculative. “There are times you don’t make any sense. Like today, the way you acted around that cute little blonde—”

  “That’s my business.”

  “Yes, but I have to watch anyway, and it’s irritating. You liked her. Why not talk to her? What’s the matter with—”