A Date With the Other Side (8 page)

And while she stared at Boston and he stared back, Harriet wiped her hands on her pink billowing blouse and stuck one out at Boston. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Harriet Danforth.”

Boston recovered enough to shake her hand. “Boston. Boston Macnamara. And you must be Chevy’s mom.”

He shot Shelby a look of amusement and she slapped her hand over her mouth so she wouldn’t laugh. He remembered what she’d told him about the origin of Chevy Danforth’s name. It was a frightening vision, Harriet carried away by passion with Clyde Danforth in the back of a nineteen-seventy Chevy Nova.

“Yes, I am. Have you met him, Boston? Is that your real name? Or is it a stage name?”

Now Shelby did laugh. “He’s not a circus act, Harriet. He’s a Samson executive.”

Boston’s hand remained trapped in Harriet’s but he shook his head and kept smiling, impressing the hell out of Shelby. “Boston is my real name. And I haven’t met Chevy. Shelby just mentioned him to me.”

Harriet clasped Boston’s hand between both of hers, giving enthusiastic pats and jerks, so that his whole arm was working like a puppet string. “Oh, I see. Well, Shelby’s always had a crush on Chevy, so I’m not surprised she mentioned him.”

“I do not have a crush on Chevy!” she burst out, mortified in the extreme. Chevy was nice if you liked talking dirt bikes and Budweiser memorabilia, and you didn’t mind that his body was the size of a 747, but she had no aspirations to live with a walking beer encyclopedia.

Boston raised an eyebrow.

Harriet leaned forward and whispered in a voice loud enough to ensure that any person within forty feet heard, “I’m sure Shelby would have eventually married Chevy except that she let Danny Tucker knock her up first.”

Boston’s startled eyes shifted to her, and Shelby felt a hot rush of shame sweep over her. Lord, but she felt like she was eighteen again, with every gaze in Cuttersville condemning and self-righteous. Gran’s disappointed silence. Her mother’s shrieking hysterics.

Her fear then that she would never make it fly as a wife and mother.

And sadness too, which crept up on her now sometimes flat out of nowhere and reminded her that if she hadn’t miscarried, she would have a seven-year-old child now, just about the age of that boy in the cemetery.

“I have to get going,” she said, stumbling over her words. “I’ll see you around, Boston. Don’t let Harriet give you highlights.”

She turned, pain in her gut, intent on making a quick getaway. Boston’s commanding corporate voice stopped her.

“I still want my tour, Shelby. I’ll see you at the house at seven.”

It wasn’t spoken as a question, but she didn’t want to argue it with him in front of Harriet. Nor did she want any of the salon sharks who were plastered to Harriet’s front window to see the stupid tears in her eyes.

“Fine. But it’s fifty bucks for a private tour.”

It was only after he agreed and she walked away that she realized something about that phrasing sounded vaguely like prostitution.

Just her luck, Harriet would be spilling it all over town that Boston Macnamara was pimping out Cuttersville girls and Shelby Tucker was his madam.

Boston stepped out of the shower, feeling his hair to make sure that all of the mousse Harriet had slapped in it had been removed. He should have known better than to get a haircut in Cuttersville. Common sense would have dictated that he wait until the weekend and drive the hour and a half to Cincinnati to get a cut by someone who wasn’t still using nineteen-eighties hair products.

But he hadn’t, so he’d gotten mousse.

Fortunately, she hadn’t messed up the cut. He padded across the white tile floor, his feet still damp, and looked in the oval mirror hanging over the vanity sink. He had only needed a trim, with those annoying little neck hairs shaved off, and Harriet had managed that, all while extolling the virtues of her unmarried daughter and questioning Boston about his financial status.

If he ever had the misfortune to meet Holly Danforth in per-son, he was going to run. Harriet made her daughter sound like a cross between Martha Stewart, preconviction, and Pamela Anderson, which was frightening. A woman who could bake a soufflé in a thong bikini was more than he cared to encounter in his kitchen.

Not that he wanted to be thinking about Harriet’s daughter when Shelby was coming over in ten minutes. He had a lot of questions for Shelby Tucker, starting with why she had never bothered to mention that she had a child with her ex-husband. It wasn’t his business, he supposed, but despite all best efforts, his attraction for her had grown steadily over the week since he’d met her. He was lusting after some poor kid’s mother and that just seemed wrong.

The doorbell rang, loud and clear even over the radio he had playing.

“Shit.” He was still in just a towel and Shelby was early. But at least the gunk was out of his hair.

Rubbing his body vigorously, he heard the front door open. Jesus, Shelby had used her key, which was not what they had agreed to. Or maybe they had never actually resolved that sticky little issue.

“Boston?”

“I’ll be down in a second,” he yelled, stepping into his boxers, water still dripping down his chest.

Shelby’s feet were on the steps, the boards creaking as she ascended. What the hell was she doing? The bathroom door was open.

He had one leg in his khaki pants and one leg out when she appeared in the hall.

“Oh! God, sorry, Boston.” Her cheeks flushed beneath her golden tan, and those soft brown eyes were pained. “It’s just, I didn’t want to be alone downstairs.”

Her teeth dug into her bottom lip. “I got a little freaked out standing on the porch. Stupid, huh?”

He dropped his pants so he’d look like less of an ass. “It’s okay. But I’ve been here all week and nothing even remotely weird has happened.”

“Can I wait up here while you…”

She dropped her eyes below his waist, a little blush on her cheeks, and he was amused. He didn’t recall Shelby being shy about the whole thing the first time they’d met.

“While I put my pants on?” Boston ran his hand through his wet hair, pushing it back so it would stop dripping on his forehead. “Are you going to watch? Or are you embarrassed?”

Eyes snapped up and she snorted. “I’ve seen you in less than that, remember.”

He remembered. He just wished circumstances had been different. Like that she had been witnessing his penis willingly and with sexual appreciation, not gaping in horror at it like it was a car accident victim.

Given another chance to be seen naked by Shelby, he wanted to put his best face forward. He really wanted to toss off a suggestive comment now—that maybe she repeat the experience with better results—but it came to him again that Harriet had said she’d been pregnant with Danny Tuckers child, and he stayed silent. He’d never come on to a mother before, and the idea wasn’t appealing now.

As he grabbed his pants back off the floor, Shelby leaned against the bathroom door and stuck her hands in the pockets of her olive green shorts. “Listen, Boston, I wanted to let you know something. Obviously I heard what Harriet said to you about me and Danny, and I wanted you to know she didn’t tell you everything. I don’t have a child. Two weeks after Danny and I got married, I had a miscarriage.”

Ouch. That made him feel like hell. He didn’t want her to have a kid, but he hadn’t meant for her to miscarry. And he hadn’t wanted her to share something so personal that obviously made her uncomfortable when he was just a passing interest, a guy renting her grandmother’s house. That was all he could be, since he was leaving in a few months.

But that didn’t stop him from reaching out, pants dropping back to the floor, and pulling her closer to him. “I’m so sorry, Shelby. You didn’t have to tell me that.”

She shrugged. “I felt like it made me sound like a bad mother, not mentioning having a child, and I didn’t want you to think that, or that I wasn’t responsible enough to take financial care of my child.”

Since the thought had crossed his mind, he wisely kept quiet. “So I guess everyone in town knew why you got married, huh? That must have been hard, especially being so young.”

Shelby blinked those soulful brown eyes at him and gently tried to pull her hand out of his. He didn’t let her.

“It didn’t matter, I guess. And I would have married Danny in a year or two anyway. Getting pregnant just sped things up. We’d been dating since I was fifteen.”

He didn’t know Shelby Tucker, and though he’d contemplated exploring a brief affair with her, he had never intended to get personal with her. But with Shelby a foot in front of him, smelling like summer flowers and looking soft and vulnerable, he couldn’t stay uninvolved.

“I can’t imagine losing a baby, Shelby. I’m not sure I’d ever get over something like that.”

“I don’t think I have,” she whispered.

Then his lips were moving toward her, and he anticipated the sweet taste of her mouth. All week she’d been rolling around in the back of his head, an unlikely and undeniable temptation, a curiosity that he had to investigate.

Now he was going to kiss her deeply and fully.

Until she jerked back away from him when the music on his radio cut off. Boston turned to the radio, wondering what the hell was the matter with it. Then the lights flickered on and off, on and off.

“I’m going to pretend that didn’t happen,” he said carefully, standing very still.

Shelby looked around the bathroom, hands airplaning out in front of her. “But it did! And I feel something cold, do you feel that?”

Oh, shit, he did, like a big wet fan was blowing on his stomach and he was suddenly reaching for the door, kicking it open with his foot. “Get the door so it doesn’t shut.”

Shelby gasped. “Oh, good gravy, I don’t want to get trapped in the bathroom with you!”

Boston managed to laugh, despite having to prop the door open with his back, his feet, and his hands, all still wearing nothing more than boxer shorts. “I can definitely think of better rooms to get trapped in with you.”

“Like what?” Shelby stepped over him into the hall. “The kitchen? We’d have food.”

“Or the bedroom,” he said, than decided the bizarre stress of the moment had been responsible for that leaving his mouth.

Which could also explain why Shelby grabbed his arm and pulled him roughly. “I agree, that would be better.”

He let her drag him into the hall, and they both watched in shock as the bathroom door slammed shut behind him.

The lock clicked into place.

Shelby put her hand on her heaving chest. “You know, this never happened before you showed up. Never saw a damn thing. Nothing. Not a cold spot, or a flicker of a light, or a vision or a single stinking creaking sound. And now I’m seeing all kinds of crazy things.”

Boston started toward his bedroom, wanting more clothes on before he either continued this discussion or his body got confused as to why he was half naked around Shelby and not acting on it. He also thought it might be a good idea to get the hell out of the White House for a little while.

“So, it’s my fault?”

“Yes! It has to be.” Her voice followed him, high-pitched, this side of hysterical.

“It’s just a coincidence.” Reaching in his dresser, he pulled out a pair of shorts that had been washed, ironed, and put away by Mary.

“Aren’t you afraid?”

He checked. Fear, no. Annoyed, sort of. Turned on, yes. “No, I’m not afraid.”

Then he realized Shelby was standing in the room with him. “Shelby back up, get out of the…”

The door to his bedroom was rolling shut with no sound, but efficient speed, and there was no time to do anything but swear as it clicked in place. He knew as surely as his name was Boston Macnamara that they were stuck.

In his bedroom. Together. With no cell phone.

And sexual tension so thick they’d need Danny’s tractor to knock through it.

Shelby tried the door, shaking the knob violently. “Did you do this, Boston? Are you psychic or something?”

She did not want to be stuck with Boston again, in his bedroom, of all places. Where that eyelet spread was conjuring up all kinds of memories.

Boston scratched his bare chest and stared at her. “No, I’m not psychic. I’m a wizard, like Harry Potter.”

Shelby licked her lips. It took her a full ten seconds to decide that he was kidding, which meant she needed to get a grip.

“No reason to get smart with me.”

Boston gave a little laugh. “Come on, Shelby. If I had paranormal powers, I wouldn’t flicker the lights. I’d vaporize your clothes or something.”

She was too frightened to even feel the kick of lust Boston’s words should have given. Not as big a kick as usual anyway. “That’s not funny!”

And why the hell was he always strutting around without a shirt? Didn’t he know it was a bad idea to start anything between them? That any flirtation they engaged in had nowhere to go since he was hightailing it out of town as soon as he could and she’d be here until the day she died? And maybe beyond, knowing Cuttersville.

Nope, any sort of… thingy between them had nowhere to go. Except to Boston’s big four-poster bed with the antique eyelet spread. Just three feet away from them. Where she’d already witnessed how impressive he could be, and that had been without any provocation.

“Where’s your cell phone?” she demanded, ready to pat down the pockets of his shorts to find it. She had to get out of this house
now
, and she wasn’t sure which was scarier—that ghosts were picking on her, or that she suddenly knew if she stayed with Boston, she would leap on him and beg for sex.

“It’s downstairs in the kitchen by my laptop.”

“Why isn’t it with you? Someone could be trying to reach you!” Shelby paced back and forth, her breathing ragged.

Why after never once showing their pale dead faces in three years were the White House ghosts suddenly slamming doors left and right? It wasn’t right. It was rude just to leap out of the afterworld like that and start fiddling with people’s property.

Of course, Rachel had lived in this house first.

“I was in the shower, Shelby. I don’t answer my phone when I’m in the shower.”