Better Homes and Hauntings

  “It did look pretty personal,” he admitted. “If you think about that, it makes sense. If she was going to have an extracurricular activity, it probably would have been with him. Donovan would have been in frequent contact with Mrs. Whitney as he built the house. He probably stayed here on the island with the family in the last few months of completion work, right before Catherine died.”

  “We have to tell somebody about this,” Cindy insisted. “We made a mistake before, not telling them about my little episode on the stairs, which I can now admit was not dust allergies. We have to let the others know what’s going on so they can be prepared.”

  “With what? Holy water and crosses?”

  “That only works on vampires,” she retorted. “And no. But I do think that it would be safer for everybody if they knew they could feel or experience something freaky. They may not overreact and hurt themselves if they know what’s coming.”

  “I’m not going to Deacon to tell him that I witnessed an argument that happened more than a hundred years ago. He’ll think we’re nuts.”

  “We just had a full-on shared hallucination. Do you have any idea how rare and weird that is?”

  “Yes, which is why I’m not eager to go around claiming that it happened!” he exclaimed.

  “If you help me talk to the others about this, I will go out on that date with you.”

  His blue eyes narrowed with suspicion. “OK, first of all, that’s massively unfair. And second, it’s sort of insulting that you think the promise of a date is enough to make me sacrifice my own dignity. And third . . . well, I can’t think of a third, because I’m probably going to fold and accept anyway.”

  “Take it or leave it.”

  “I’ll take it,” he grumbled. “But I’m not going into great detail about Catherine’s possibly straying with the architect. There’s only so much news Deacon can take.”

  “Deal. And we have to stay on the island for our date.”

  “What?” Jake cried.

  “I don’t want you to try to razzle-dazzle me with fancy restaurants and maître d’s who know you by name. If you’re going to woo me, you’re doing it here. No resources. No false fanciness. It’s like Survivorman, only with dating.”

  “Cindy!”

  “Those are my terms.”

  Jake slapped some dust off his khakis. “Deacon should hire you for his legal department.”

  Cindy preened a bit and tried to tamp down the frisson of excitement in her belly. And then a thought occurred to her. “Oh, come on, I was possessed by a spirit, had a ghostly flashback, and I’m still a maid?”

  ELSEWHERE ON THE island, the day was shaping up to be a bright one for Nina. The indoor garden room was almost cleared and ready for the renovations she’d discussed with Anthony. The water features were refilled and ready for the water lilies. And the crews were clearing the tiered gardens leading to the east side of the house, which would entail planting a variety of spring- and summer-blooming plants, which would blossom on a rotating basis. Nina always enjoyed the challenge of choosing and placing such plants so the transition was seamless. And today she would remove the plants from their peat pots and begin organizing them into the appropriate groupings.

  But first, she was meeting with Deacon and Cindy to discuss the careful cleaning process for the stained, bird-soiled marble statuary around the grounds . . . except that Cindy was late, and Deacon had decided to use this time as his lunch break, so he was chewing his way through a large veggie sub. He’d offered to split it with Nina, but she found the amount of wasabi he used to be a violation of the term condiment. And Nina kept getting distracted by a weird itching sensation in the corner of her brain, as if she was looking at some pattern she should recognize, but it wasn’t coming to her.

  It was becoming a familiar state, this strange could I be having déjà vu but not really? feeling. Ever since she started having the recurring dream about making beds in the staff quarters, only to be accosted from behind, she felt as if there was something about the house that she should understand but didn’t. And it was getting a little frustrating. Every time she had the dream, she saw and felt a little more, and was felt a little more by the man who snuck up behind her. The woman in the dream didn’t seem frightened of the man, until, of course, he started choking her. But she never saw who it was. Nothing about him was distinctive, other than his large, warm, very talented hands.

  Still, it was less fun to have those hands wrapped around her throat.

  Mid-bite, Deacon waved his free hand in front of Nina’s face, breaking her line of sight to a statue of Medea pouring water into the lily pond. “Earth to Nina, come in, Nina.”

  “Have you noticed a theme with the statues in the gardens?” Nina asked.

  “No, but I’m sure you have.” Deacon chuckled, prompting Nina to whack him with her clipboard. “Nina, your observations are usually pretty interesting. Please proceed without smacking me with office supplies,” he amended, wrapping the remains of his sandwich in cling-wrap and giving her his full attention.

  “OK, the fountain out in front of the house, that’s Metis, the first wife of Zeus, and clearly, everything didn’t turn out happily ever after for them. We’ve talked about this. This is Aphrodite, a pretty traditional statue as far as the time period goes but also the wife of Hephaestus, a powerful, technologically advanced god who spent most of his time devising traps to humiliate his wife with her various lovers. Not a happy bride. Over there? That’s Medea, wife of Jason, who was so devastated when her husband betrayed her that she killed her own children. And there? That’s Helen of Troy. For all the romance of running off with Paris and launching a thousand ships, she started off as the wife of Menelaus, who thought that being a good host meant trotting his naked, humiliated spouse out for his guests to ogle. So what do we see when we look at the big picture?”

  “The Greek gods were in desperate need of marriage counseling?” When Nina whacked him with the clipboard again, he exclaimed, “Ow! That’s it, I’m taking the clipboard.”

  “Over my dead body,” she told him, trying in vain to hold it out of reach. He humored her and didn’t try too hard to retrieve it. Honestly, the man had the wingspan of a condor. “Whoever designed the original gardens surrounded the house with images of women trapped in unhappy marriages to powerful men.”

  “Well, it would have been Catherine, right?” Deacon supposed. “She was the one who supervised the construction of the house. Do you think she was trying to tell Gerald something?”

  “Could be,” Nina said. “But if that was the case, wouldn’t she pick more triumphant figures? Hera, who managed to get revenge on Zeus for his affairs by turning his lovers into animals or tying their legs in knots to prevent them from having Zeus’s babies. Clytemnestra, Helen’s sister-in-law, who wrapped her cheating, child-murdering husband, Agamemnon, in a special royal robe she designed so he couldn’t fight back when she stabbed him.”

  “Were there any happy stories in Greek mythology?” Deacon asked. “I can’t seem to remember any.”

  Nina shook her head. “Not so much. I just can’t shake the feeling that the message in the garden isn’t from Catherine, it’s to Catherine.”

  While she was distracted by that cheerful thought, Deacon snatched the clipboard out of her hands. She glared at him, but there was no real heat in it. Deacon grinned cheekily and handed the board back. “Well, as much as I have enjoyed sharing a nonlunch and upsetting Greek marriage history with you, I have to get back inside.”

  “Fine, then, go develop world-altering social technology! Just leave me alone with my thoughts on the creepy statues!” Nina called after him. He waved back at her, laughing.

  With her silly grin still in place, Nina strolled to the back of the house. One of Anthony’s crews had replaced all of the broken panes in the largest greenhouse, and Nina had a lovely makeshift potting shed there. She was practically skipping when she opened the doors, humming a happy Irish folk tune. But the moment she steppe
d into the warm, humid space, her foot skidded across the floor, making her stumble into one of the potting tables.

  “Mother fudger!” she yelped, rubbing at her hip where she’d whacked it against the corner.

  How the heck had she managed to slip on a textured concrete floor? She looked down at her feet. Beneath her shoe was a large, curving shard of terra-cotta. One of many shards of broken planting pots scattered across the floor. It took Nina a full minute to process what she was seeing. It looked as if a bomb had gone off in her greenhouse. Broken pots and potting soil lay scattered and broken on the floor. Every seedling she’d nurtured was flattened into the black potting soil. Her plans for the gardens had been ripped off the walls and tossed to the ground.

  Nina stooped to pick up the curved piece of planter. The all-too-familiar sense of panic burst through the wall of calm she’d built up and burned through her chest like acid. It was happening again. How had he gotten onto the island without setting off the security equipment? This was how it had started before. Ruined work sites, damaged equipment, carefully planted flowers dug up overnight. She should consider herself lucky that she didn’t have a truck on site to smash. She would lose this job. She would become too much trouble, and Deacon would drop her like a hot rock when he realized the security threat she posed. She would lose her business. She would lose her apartment. She would lose the friendships she’d built with everyone here. Deacon. The tender green shoots of whatever this thing was that was growing between them would be trampled.

  Hot, angry tears welling in her eyes, Nina slung the shard against the wall and reveled in its satisfying crunch.

  “Nina?” Deacon called. “Hey, I forgot to ask—What the hell? Are you all right?”

  Nina’s face was beet-red and twisted into a furious, un-Nina-like expression. She hunched against her workbench, staring at the mess in the greenhouse as if it was responsible for the national debt and movies based on video games.

  “Nina.”

  When she didn’t respond, Deacon turned her to face him. But he wasn’t entirely sure she was seeing him.

  “Nina, don’t take what I’m about to do personally.”

  He took the remains of his sandwich out of its bag and waved it under her nose. The bright sting of the wasabi struck her full in the nostrils, and Nina inhaled sharply, her face wrinkling in distaste. “Good sweet Lord!”

  Deacon grinned at her. “There she is.”

  “You’re going to burn off your taste buds if you keep eating that stuff.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Now, what’s going on in here?”

  Nina hadn’t even realized the tears were coursing down her cheeks. “Damn it,” she growled, wiping at her face.

  “Did you have an accident? Did you fall and knock something over?” Deacon asked, gesturing to the mess. “Several times?”

  Nina shook her head, her teeth grinding together as she snatched another piece of pottery from the floor. “Stupid asshole.”

  Deacon’s mouth fell open. “I’m sorry?”

  “Not you,” she insisted, the color draining from her face. “The asshole who did this. He’s the asshole.”

  Deacon shook her gently and hooked his hands under her arms. “Nina, snap out of it. Oh, hell, look at your hand.”

  Nina glanced down at her palm, where a deep puncture was welling blood. She hadn’t even realized she was holding the jagged piece of pottery in her palm. At the sight of her torn flesh, she burst into wracking sobs. “Damn it! Just—damn it!”

  “Hey.” Deacon hugged her to his chest. She was trembling, as if her anger couldn’t be contained by her body and was threatening to shake its way loose from her very muscle fibers. “Hey, come on, now. I don’t know what’s bothering you, but there’s no reason to Hulk out on poor, innocent plants. This isn’t like you.”

  He tucked her head under his chin. He rubbed his hands along her back, stroking her hair. Her chilled, trembling hands stilled as she blew out long, deep breaths. The orange-and-spice scent of her hair wafted up to meet his nose. He pressed his mouth to her temple. She leaned into the caress of his lips, angling her head until he was kissing her cheek. She turned her face toward him, as if she was searching his face for a quirk of the lip, a flicker of cruelty in his eyes, anything to show that he was manipulating her. He didn’t have a mirror handy, but he was sure that all she saw was wide-eyed awe and lust. She inhaled sharply as he threaded his hands through her hair and pulled her closer.

  The wreckage of the potting shed faded away, and Deacon’s world shrank down to the nerve endings in his lips. Nina settled her weight against his thigh, pushing him back against the floor. Deacon rocked onto his back, pulling Nina down with him as he slid his tongue between her lips. Nina’s fingers trailed down his abdomen until she brushed bare skin. He hissed at the icy contact against his skin, bucking his hips against her.

  Nina plucked at the buttons of his shirt, pushing it aside and baring his pale, smooth skin. She laughed shamelessly as he writhed under her cold touch. His sharp white teeth nipped at her bottom lip, a bit of revenge for her torture, and he licked along the line of her throat, nibbling at her collarbone. She dragged her hand to the button of his jeans, toying with it. His hands splayed around her hips, molding her body to his, before pulling her shirt up her long, pale back and pulling it over her head. Nina gasped, rolling her hips as the hard curve of his desire drove against her center. His mouth rose to meet the cotton-covered swell of her breast, tugging the straps down her arms. But he fumbled with the clasp, unable to find the magical combination of undone hooks to make it open. He tried to regain his footing, smacking into a broken pot.

  The clinking sound caught Nina’s attention, and she retreated from the kiss. Her face flushed red and she scooted back, closer to the potting table. Deacon sat up, following her movement, but he knew that . . . whatever it was that they’d just done had come to an abrupt close. The spell had been broken. Clothes were being buttoned. And a bewildered Deacon would have gladly traded everything he owned to go back one minute in time.

  “So, that happened,” Nina said, biting her bottom lip as she searched for her shirt.

  “Are you OK?”

  She nodded. “This is my problem to deal with, Deacon. Don’t worry about it.”

  “I meant, are you OK with the whole abrupt greenhouse semi-nudity?” he scoffed, making her laugh. “Also, there is no such thing as one person’s problem when we’re living out here on our own, especially when it makes you cry like this. You can tell me. You’ve known me for a while now, Nina. Do I strike you as someone who’s going to spread gossip?”

  She patted his large hand, which was cupped around her shoulder, and shook her head. “No.”

  “We’ll go to the staff quarters and get your hand cleaned up, and you can tell me all about it. Unless you’ve been talking to Dotty and you believe that ghosts destroyed your greenhouse. If that’s the case, she’s dealing with blood-dirt-and-tears Nina.”

  Nina rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. “Don’t patronize me.”

  “I like to think of it as emotional coddling.”

  “How is that better?”

  “Six of one, half a dozen of the other,” Deacon said, with a pat on her shoulder, leading her out of the wrecked greenhouse.

  WITH A SPONGEBOB SquarePants bandage on her hand and a cold bottle of ginger ale resting against her thigh, Nina felt safer. Removed from the violent destruction of her plants, it felt less as if Rick was going to burst in at any moment and finish the job. She took a deep breath and tried to figure out how to explain all of this to Deacon.

  “The beginning is usually the easiest place to start,” he said, gently slipping his hand around her uninjured palm.

  Nina nodded. “My former partner, Rick, was better with people. We met a few months before I graduated from college. He was dating my roommate, and he cheated on her, if memory serves. Which should have been a major warning sign. I ignored it, of course. Rick’s family owned a landscaping bu
siness in Providence, which basically boiled down to a lawn-mowing service. He saw some of my senior projects and asked me to help him out with a few sketches for some clients. A few sketches turned into full-time design work. And usually, while I was digging and planting, Rick was on the porch having lemonade with the client, giving the client all the highlights of the flower beds we were installing. He wasn’t great with plants, but he was a hell of a salesman. He made everything sound magical, as if the client was just a few days away from backyard paradise. And he was usually able to upsell them into a water feature or a more expensive variety of plants.

  “It worked. Business boomed. We started getting higher-income, higher-profile clients. Rick changed the name to something acceptable to our wealthy clients: Elegant Environments. He printed up new brochures and business cards, went to trade shows, and bought new equipment. And for a while, it worked. We were in demand. Rick presented himself as the local boy made good, creating magic out of dirt. We worked on larger and larger projects, some of which got publicity in some home-and-garden magazines. Rick did the interviews, of course, because he was the brains of the operation. I was more comfortable behind the scenes anyway, so I didn’t mind. I did all of the designs, and eventually, I did more and more of the field work. Rick couldn’t make it out to the sites, because he was too busy lunching with clients or going to chamber of commerce meetings and ‘making contacts.’

  “Rick was always telling me that we were barely breaking even, that he wasn’t taking a paycheck, because he wanted to make sure I got paid along with our work crews. Everything we had was being invested back into the business, he said. Our overhead was overwhelming because of salaries, insurance, and the wear and tear on the equipment, he said. One morning, I showed up at his house to pick up some plans, and he had this brand-new Jet Ski hooked up to his truck. As a matter of fact, he had a new truck. He was driving the old one to work and keeping the nicer one at home for personal travel. And there was a brand-new bass boat parked next to his garage. He was funneling money from the business into his toys. Jet Skis, the boat, a new plasma-screen with surround sound, all the while telling me that he couldn’t afford to give me a raise or the share in the business that he had promised me. He couldn’t give away part of his family business, after all.