Ready & Willing (4 page)

Then again, why did she think Silas Summerfield was trying to tell her something? She’d had a weird—okay, a bizarre—dream, that was all. Induced, no doubt, by the fact that she’d bought a portrait of a handsome man who’d been dead for three quarters of a century. And,
okay
, maybe too much Chunky Monkey ice cream. But she’d had bizarre dreams before and had never thought someone was trying to tell her something.

Audrey Fine Magill wasn’t the type of woman to buy wholly into supernatural hoo-ha. Then again, neither was she the type to completely discount it. She believed that everything in the universe was connected, even if in some small, tenuous way, and that anything that happened in some far corner of the world could potentially have an impact on everyone in it. And she believed, too, that there were some people in the world who were able to . . . access things . . . that other people couldn’t. Not that she thought she was a likely conduit to the other side herself, but . . .

Well. There had been times after Sean’s death three years ago when Audrey had felt and heard things she would have thought impossible. Times when she had felt as if her husband—or some afterglow of him—was in the same room with her, watching her go about her daily life. And there had been mornings when she’d awoken and felt as if she could turn over in bed and find him lying right there beside her. And once, she would have sworn she heard the soft murmur of her name from behind her, spoken in Sean’s voice.

Naturally, each of those experiences could have been explained away as a product of her grief. Of her desire to have him back. Some seemingly real hallucination manufactured by her brain because she couldn’t cope with his absence. But maybe, just maybe, those experiences had been the result of something else.

Nothing like that had happened for some time now, but there had been enough instances of Sean’s “return” in the year after his death that Audrey had adopted the opinion that the door to the afterlife was sometimes left ajar.

Had Captain Summerfield slipped through it? she wondered. Had he taken advantage of her presence in his house—his home—to relay a message to his great-great . . . however many greats . . . grandson? And, hey, while she was at it, had he been responsible for the moved painting? Had it been his ghostly hand that swept her hats to the floor?

Or had Audrey gone well and truly off the deep end?

She sipped her coffee and looked at the photograph of Nathaniel Summerfield again. And from some very dim corner of her brain, she recalled Captain Summerfield’s admonition from her dream:
The boy is in terrible danger from himself.

Audrey understood what that was like, too. There had been a time in her own life—though, granted, she’d been considerably younger than Nathaniel Summerfield—when she’d been in a similar state. Fortunately, Sean Magill had come along and helped her find her way again. She wondered if Nathaniel had anyone to help him. Anyone besides a long-dead ancestor who showed up uninvited in people’s dreams.

And she wondered, too, if maybe she should check up on him herself. Just in case.

Three

NATHANIEL SUMMERFIELD WAS ALREADY HAVING A
rough day when his assistant Irene announced that he had a visitor who hadn’t made an appointment. Normally, he would have told Irene to tell the person to come back when they did, even if it
wasn’t
a day when his phone was ringing off the hook and he was fielding all kinds of obstacles to his about-to-be-signed contract with Edward Dryden. Man, everyone from the Fair Housing Commission to the Small Business Owners Association was breathing down his neck over this thing. Edward would be at Nathaniel’s office in less than three hours, and he still had to review part of the contract before the man’s arrival.

But it was just past noon when Irene informed him of Audrey Magill’s need to speak to him, and anyone Nathaniel might need to call or do business with would probably be breaking for lunch, anyway. Plus, Irene said Ms. Magill promised she would only take a few minutes of his time. What cinched it, though, was that he caught a glimpse of Audrey Magill standing just beyond the door and decided he could spare more than a few minutes for the woman, because she was, in a word, stunning.

So stunning, that he was momentarily taken aback when she strode into his office. The reaction surprised him, since she wasn’t what he would have normally called beautiful—at least, not by his own definition of beautiful. She was too wholesome-looking by his standards, with her fresh-scrubbed face and hair pulled into a simple ponytail and attire that was better suited to a Sunday brunch than any kind of corporate affair, something that indicated she wasn’t here on business. Which was just fine with Nathaniel, since a woman who looked like Audrey Magill didn’t exactly inspire businesslike responses in a man.

Even though she wasn’t conventionally beautiful, she was stunning. Had he mentioned that? The ponytail might have been simple, but it was nearly as thick as her wrist, holding razor straight, ink black hair that spilled to almost the middle of her back. It was the kind of hair that made a man itch to unfasten it, so he could thread his fingers through the silky tresses . . . and then splay them across the pillow on the other side of the bed. And her eyes. Good God. They were huge and abundantly lashed, as blue and clear as a Caribbean bay. She was slim but curvy, her generous hips and breasts only enhanced by the straight khaki skirt and pale blue T-shirt she was wearing. Her only jewelry was a gold chain that disappeared beneath the scooped neck of her shirt and gold hoops in her ears.

Not only was she not conventionally beautiful, but she wasn’t the sort of woman to whom Nathaniel was normally attracted, either. He preferred women who went out of their way to play up their attributes, the kind who took hours to put on their makeup and fix their hair and choose their outfit for a date—provided they were ready when he got there and didn’t make him wait. Women who wore lots of jewelry that swayed and glittered, and who chose outrageously feminine clothing meant to exaggerate their, ah, assets. Where a lot of men felt cheated by something like a Wonderbra, Nathaniel kind of liked them—though, naturally, he couldn’t wait to get a woman out of one.

Wholesome-looking Audrey Magill, however, didn’t seem like the sort of woman who would go for a Wonderbra. Which meant whatever she was packing, it was entirely hers.

Hell, yes, he could spare a few minutes for her. He even straightened his sapphire necktie and smoothed a few non-existent wrinkles out of his charcoal suit as he covered the few steps necessary to greet her.

“I might as well get right to my point, Mr. Summerfield,” she said after shaking his hand. “I know you must be very busy.”

Her handshake surprised him, too, as it was solid and masculine, the sort of handshake he didn’t normally receive from a woman, even those who worked at the same corporate level he did. She took the seat he indicated on the other side of his desk, seeming in no way intimidated by his office environment, which he’d deliberately decorated in Early American Despot specifically to intimidate people. She just sat up straighter in the leather wing chair and met his gaze evenly over his expansive mahogany desk.

Then she had to go and ruin everything by asking him, “Do you believe in ghosts, Mr. Summerfield?”

Nathaniel hoped his feelings didn’t show on his face. Because at that moment, what he mostly believed was that he should pick up the phone and call security, because stunning or not, he didn’t have time for a nut job. Hopefully that didn’t show in his voice, however, when he replied, “Ah . . . ghosts, Ms. Magill?”

She nodded. And said, “It’s
Mrs.
Magill, actually.”

His gaze dropped automatically to her hands, which she’d woven together and hooked over her crossed leg. Sure enough, there on the ring finger of her left hand winked a plain gold band.

Married and a potential nut job
, he thought.
Two major strikes right there
. Good thing she had the stunning, no-Wonderbra-necessary-thing going, otherwise, she’d be out the door right now. “Mrs. Magill,” he corrected himself obediently. “No. I don’t believe in ghosts.”

She expelled a soft sound that could have meant anything. “I don’t either, actually.”

Nathaniel expelled a mental sigh of relief. Then he reminded himself she was a
Mrs.
, so the state of her mental health—or anything else about her—made no difference. He liked women.
A lot
. He pursued women.
A lot
. But he drew the line at married. Not necessarily because of any moral leanings, but because the timing was a nightmare.

“I did have the strangest dream last night, though,” she continued. “Your great-great . . . several greats grandfather was in it, and he told me you were—”

Nathaniel must have eyed her suspiciously, because she stopped talking, so suddenly that her mouth remained opened. Then she closed it and smiled in a way that made him think she realized how questionably sane—or sober—she sounded.

“Can I start over?” she asked. “I sound like a raging nut job.”

Which may or may not be indicative of actual nut jobbiness. Willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, however, he said, “Of course.”

She took a deep breath and tried again. “I recently bought a house in Old Louisville that, it turns out, belonged to one of your ancestors.”

“Really,” Nathaniel said, not sure how this was relevant to, oh . . . anything.

“Then yesterday afternoon, I went into an antique shop on Third Street and discovered a portrait of that ancestor—a riverboat captain named Silas Summerfield—for sale. I thought that was an interesting coincidence.”

Nathaniel would have thought it interesting, too. Had he, you know, been interested.

“Naturally, I bought it,” she said.

Naturally, Nathaniel looked at his watch.

“And then last night,” she continued, “I had a very strange dream, and I woke up to an even stranger reality.”

She launched into an account then that promised to take considerably more than the few minutes she’d already used up, something about his great-great-blah-blah-blah grandfather showing up in her dream and telling her that Nathaniel was in danger of losing his soul, followed by something about a break-in to her house that turned out to not be a break-in after all, but some kind of possibly-perhaps-sort-of ghostly mischief, and then . . .

Well, Nathaniel stopped listening at that point—not that he’d ever really started listening all that closely in the first place—so he really wasn’t sure what she said after that. Or,
all right
, before that, either. All he knew was that she was about to use up his entire lunch hour—which, granted, he never used to actually eat lunch anyway—with some cockamamie story about an ominous warning from beyond the veil that if he entered into his partnership with Edward Dryden, he would lose his soul forever.

Stunning and no-Wonderbra-necessary notwithstanding, Nathaniel didn’t have all day and did have a sound mind. So the next time she paused for a breath, he said, “Ms. Magill, I appreciate your concern, but you’ll understand, I’m sure, when I tell you I don’t share it.”

“Mrs. Magill,” she corrected him again. She studied him in clear confusion. “Why would I understand that? I mean, I know this sounds—”

“Ludicrous?” he finished for her. “Because it doesn’t just sound that. It is that.”

Now she studied him in clear offense. “Look, I realize what happened to me last night and this morning might seem a little out of the ordinary—”

“It doesn’t seem a little out of the ordinary,” Nathaniel interrupted her. “It
is
completely ridiculous.”

“And believe me,” she went on as if he hadn’t spoken, “I weighed my decision carefully before coming here, for the very reason that I was afraid you’d think I’m nuts.”

She paused, evidently awaiting a response to that. So he said, “And?”

Evidently that wasn’t the response she had been expecting, because she narrowed her eyes at him. “And I don’t expect everyone to believe in the possibility of an afterlife or any sort of conduit between that and the here and now. I’m as skeptical as the next person about that kind of thing. But I’m not completely closed-minded about it, either. And I thought you might at least be like me in finding the whole concept as . . . as . . .”

“As ridiculous?” he supplied helpfully. Well, okay, maybe it was less helpfully than it was antagonistically. At least he’d offered her something.

“As interesting,” she finished tersely, “as I do.”

“Ms. Magill—”

“
Mrs.
”

“
Mrs.
Magill,” he amended again, wondering why he had trouble remembering she was married, “You can’t think I would put stock in a dream you had, even if it did
allegedly
feature one of my ancestors. Dreams are just images that unroll in a person’s brain while they’re unconscious. All the more reason to not put any stock in them. My advice to you would be to lay off the Hostess Ho Hos before you go to bed at night.”

She narrowed her eyes at him even more. “It was Chunky Monkey ice cream, and I know perfectly well this sounds like nonsense. But don’t you find it strange that I would have a dream like that?”

What Nathaniel found strange, she didn’t want to know.

“And then wake up this morning to see an article about you in the paper?” she added. “One that your great-great-et-cetera grandfather said I would see in the paper?”

“Ms. Magill—”

“
Mrs.
,” she corrected him yet again, more vehemently this time.

“
Mrs.
Magill,” he amended yet again, less graciously this time. “There have been articles in the paper about me and Edward Dryden almost every day for two weeks. The development he’s undertaking—and which I’m investing in heavily—is going to be one of the biggest ones this city has seen for more than a decade. For all I know, that was what caused you to have your dream, not some portrait of my great-great . . . whatever . . . grandfather. And certainly not any danger I might be in of losing my soul.”