Abby's Christmas Spirit (2 page)

Abby sat on her backpack and tried to regroup, ignoring her nipples. They were just going to have to wait because she was in a serious situation.

What the hell good was being psychic if you couldn’t see yourself stuck in a pantry?

She dug her tarot cards out of her bag and started to do a spread but she couldn’t see any of the images.

Frowning, she realized she was going to handle this situation in the dark. Literally. Like a normal person.

Where was a candle when you needed one?

She’d like to cast a spell from the pantry to make Damien disappear.

There was no Wiccan way she was marrying him.

Chapter Two

WITHIN AN HOUR
the crew was gone and Darius was sitting on the steps, waiting for morning to come. He knew he needed to play to the cameras, try to rile up the so-called ghosts, but that was more his co-host Jared’s part and Jared was on vacation for the Christmas holiday. Darius had no particular plans for Christmas so he’d figured this was a perfect time to film in his own house.

His house. What a joke.

He’d been twenty the one and only other time he’d been in this house. He had been on a ghost tour, fascinated with the fact that so many people believed in the existence of spirits. He’d been a science and business major at the University of Chicago on summer break working odd jobs across the Midwest when he’d stumbled on Cuttersville with its reputation for hauntings. This house had been owned by an older lady and when the tour had gone through, she’d had her granddaughters over, two with dark hair and one skinny blonde. The blonde had been his age and she had served tea to the tour goers. Very normal and polite. The second granddaughter had been a dark brunette with a long black skirt and boots on despite the summer heat. The youngest had been just a kid and she had jumped from antique sofa to antique sofa in the parlor, her movements so wild that her sister had yelled at her.

None of which should have stuck in his memories except for the fact that when she’d seen him, the youngest girl had stopped jumping up and down and had stared at him, hard. Then she’d said, “You can’t have it.”

“Have what?” he’d asked, amused by her boldness. He could appreciate that trait, having a bit of it himself.

“This house. You can’t buy it.”

Frowning, thinking that was weird, he’d told her, “I’m not in the market for buying any house. I’m in college.”

“You will be, Darius.” Then the sage-like quality was gone and she’d jumped off the couch, landing on one knee. “I want an ice cream sandwich! Grandma!”

But Darius had been so unnerved by the fact that she’d known his name that he had stood staring at her retreating form for so long the sister dressed in black moved close to him and hissed, “What are you looking at?”

It had snapped him out of his haze and he’d left with the tour.

He’d found the house charming that day, its inhabitants a little odd.

Tonight there were no inhabitants but him, and it was just cold and gloomy. The lights were back off now that the equipment was on and he was bored. Restless.

And his dusty house had mice because he kept hearing a rustling sound coming from behind the stairs, back by the kitchen.

“I hear something from the back of the house,” he told the camera set up in front of him, trying to inject enthusiasm and urgency into his voice. It really was time to wrap up his show. In eight seasons he had yet to really see anything that would convince him ghosts irrefutably existed and it was getting harder and harder to sound anything but skeptical. “I’m going to check it out.”

As he moved down the hallway with a hand held camera, he paused to listen. There it was again. He veered left towards the dining room, trying to get his bearings. He knew this room intimately. In his dreams he always laid her down on the walnut table and kissed her thighs. But she didn’t exist and he needed to set this house and thoughts of her aside. He probably needed some meds too, now that he thought about it. How normal was it to dream about the same fantasy woman for as long as he had?

There was a door to his left and he pulled it open. There was nothing in it but shelves, a closet or pantry of sorts. The floorboard creaked behind him. He turned around, looking at the floor for signs of rodents scurrying, but he saw nothing.

“I’m hearing strange and unusual sounds. Like footsteps.” Or a house settling. But the noises were good for the editing. It would make his house more appealing to the right buyer. Someone who wanted a haunted house in a haunted town.

He had the sudden sensation that someone was watching him, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up. Darius turned around slowly, scanning the dark. With his own eyes he couldn’t see a thing but through the camera lens he had a green view of the room. There wasn’t anything there.

“Hey, uh, Darius, you copy?” It was Trent, on his radio from the van outside where he monitored the cameras and sound equipment.

“Yeah, I’m here.” He was wearing a mic clipped to his waistband. “What’s up?”

“The camera in the kitchen just went out. And so did the one in the hall, which is totally weird. Can you check on them?”

“Sure.” That was weird. For even one to go out was rare, but two? That was virtually unheard of.

“Holy crap. The bedroom just went out! What the hell is going on?”

Darius sighed. For the first time since he was fourteen and had gotten into a college prep private high school, he felt tired. His ambition had sputtered. He had a massive amount of money, three houses he was hardly ever in, a business corporation comprised of extensive media and merchandise holdings, and he was bored. Just plain old bored and maybe a little tired.

It pissed him off. He didn’t do miserable. Or brooding. He went for what he wanted and he got it.

The problem was, at the moment, he didn’t seem to know what he wanted.

But as he moved toward the kitchen, he realized the most logical explanation for why the cameras had gone out would be if someone were in the house, messing with him.

The thought actually excited him. A burglar would liven things up.

Which circled him back around to the thought that he did need some serious medication if the thought of going a round with a possibly armed intruder got his juices flowing.

“I just played the film back to see if there was an explanation for them going out and there most definitely is,” Trent says. “There’s a chick in the house.”

“A woman? Are you serious? I thought maybe it was Jim or someone screwing with us.” But there were no females on the team and truthfully no one goofed around when they were actually filming. It was too time consuming and costly. “Are you sure it’s a woman?”

“Oh, most definitely. She has long dark hair and a rack that has me pushing replay even as we speak.”

Nice. “I wonder who she is?”

“How the frick should I know? I say you go ask her. Do you want some back up? I could question her if you’d like.”

Darius rolled his eyes. It wasn’t like Trent to be a cat-caller. She must be seriously hot. “I think I can handle it, thanks.”

“Give her my number while you’re at it.”

“Trent, she’s breaking and entering in an empty house. She’s disabling our cameras. I don’t think she’s exactly right in the head.” He started towards the steps. “Alright, I’m heading up. If the camera in the bedroom isn’t back on in ten, come on up to the house.”

Chances were, their little visitor had seen their
Ghost Tracker
van and was looking for a thrill, but there was no reason not to exercise a little caution.

Darius would send her packing, maybe offer her a T-shirt with the show’s logo. He could use her to his advantage by having her spread the word around town that the episode would be airing in February and the house would up for sale right afterwards.

All those business-like and logical thoughts flew completely out of his head when he reached the top of the stairs and shone his flashlight around to get his bearings.

The beam of light landed on a woman standing in the doorframe of the master bedroom.

Not just any woman.

His woman.

The one in his dreams.

Darius swallowed hard, frozen at the top of the stairs. She was even more beautiful in person than in the haziness of his nighttime visions. Her hair was long, dark, wavy, parted in the middle, flowing past her shoulders, thick and exotic. Her eyes were dark and wide, her lips bee stung plump. Her cheekbones were high and her skin looked pale in the feeble light of his flashlight. She was wearing slim fitting black jeans, boots that went to her knees, and a loose, slouchy shirt of undetermined color with a scarf wrapped around her neck.

He was afraid to move, afraid that if he took a step towards her he would wake up. That this was a dream. But it didn’t feel like a dream at all. It felt completely real, the cold of the house seeping into his bones and the static from his mic going in and out. Trent had seen her too, and never in his life had a dream felt this real.

Reassured that he was in fact awake, Darius moved forward, the light trained on her face. God, he could not get over how gorgeous she was. That she existed.

“Would you mind moving that light out of my eyes?” she asked, her voice feminine and graceful but with a bite of irritation.

Darius dropped the angle of the beam to the ground immediately. Of course he finally met the woman he had thought was just a fantasy he’d conjured and he was blinding her. “Sorry. Can I… help you?” He wasn’t sure what else to say.

“Yes. If you could turn on the heat in the house, I’d appreciate it.”

“Uh.” Darius frowned. Why the hell would she expect him to do that? “Can I ask what you’re doing here?”

“I’m squatting.”

The girl of his dreams was apparently insane. Somehow that seemed fitting. “You can’t do that. You can’t stay here.”

“Sure I can. I have to say I wasn’t expecting the owner to show up though. You are the owner, right?”

He nodded. “I’m Darius Damiano. And you are?”

“Abigail Murphy. This house belonged to my grandmother, then my sister until you forced her to sell it.”

Oh. My. God. How was it possible that he’d been dreaming about one of the Cuttersville witch sisters? The youngest one, by process of elimination. Which made her the kid who’d been bouncing on the sofa ten plus years ago. The one who had known his name.

She wasn’t insane.

He was.

Or maybe they both were.

Abby couldn’t see Darius’s expression clearly in the dark, but he seemed to have been stunned speechless. Good. She understood the feeling, given her reaction to hearing his name twenty minutes earlier.

“That does put a wrinkle in my plan to have you here, not to mention it cramps my privacy, but I’ll manage.” She’d had to severely rearrange her expectations for this evening but maybe this would actually work to her advantage.

“I didn’t force your sister to sell this house,” he said, a beat behind the current conversation. “I gave her a more than fair price. Way more than she ever could have gotten selling it on her own.”

“She didn’t want to sell it at all. But when you unearthed that tax bill, she had no choice. If it wasn’t for you, she would be living here raising her family right now. Instead it’s been sitting empty collecting dust and losing shingles. I want to know why.” It had never stopped pissing her off and now that she had the man responsible in front of her, Abby heard her voice getting higher and more agitated. She tried to rein it in. She was still floored that this was Darius. She had been planning to have sex with this man. He was supposed to be her future husband. Now all she wanted to do was shake him really hard.

Okay, that wasn’t entirely true. She was still more than physically attracted to him, which furthered her irritation.

He didn’t sound too pleased either. “It’s none of your business. I think you need to leave.”

“Sell me the house.” Might as well lay it on the table for him. “I’ll give you one-fifty.”

“What? Are you crazy? That’s half what I paid.”

“You said you overpaid and you were right. Why should I do the same? You clearly don’t want the house. I’ll take it off your hands.”

“No. I could get more on the open market.”

It’s what she expected him to say. Hell, it’s what she would say under similar circumstances. So she would have to get bold. “Then I’m not leaving.”

“
What
? You can’t just decide to stay here.”

“I just did.” Abby felt a little gleeful at how flummoxed he’d sounded. It was clear he wasn’t used to people arguing with him. She adjusted her backpack on her shoulders and tried not to grin.

“I’ll call the police.”

“Go for it. My brother-in-law is the police chief.” Not that Charlotte’s husband Will would bend the law for her, but Darius didn’t know that.

He made a sound of frustration. “My attorney lives here. I’ll call him.”

“I’m very aware of that. He’s my other brother-in-law.”

Darius cursed. “I forgot about that.”

“Did you know they just had a baby? His name is Alistair and he’s super cute. He looks like Winston Churchill.” Abby thought Bree and Ian’s son was the epitome of butterball baby. She couldn’t wait to see him and tickle his belly.

“No, I didn’t know that.”

“Why does that not surprise me?” she asked wryly.

He moved closer to her, so rapidly that it set Abby’s heart to racing and she stood straight up in alarm. She wasn’t expecting him to close in on her like that. That was all. Her reaction had nothing to do with sexual attraction.

“Don’t act like you know me,” he said. “You don’t. We’ve only met once and that was a decade ago.”

That knocked her completely off kilter. “What? What are you talking about? We’ve never met.” Just in her dreams. And in his dreams.

“Yes, we did. I came here on a ghost tour thirteen years ago to this very house. You were here with your sisters. You told me I couldn’t buy this house, even though I didn’t say anything to you except for hello.”

Abby frowned. She didn’t remember doing any such thing. “I was eleven years old. Why would I say something like that?”