Rest Thy Head (13 page)

He came up sputtering. “You shouldn’t have done that.” His voice was silky smooth.

At that moment, Peyton shivered and made Jake stare at her. “Your lips are blue. Time to get out.”

When they left the water, Peyton wrapped her towel around her shoulders and sat down on a big, flat rock right on the edge of the lake. “Feel the rock. It’s still warm.”

Jake eased himself down beside her. “Yeah, it is.”

Peyton sighed and slipped her arm through his. As usual he had chosen to sit so his good side faced her. “Thanks for bringing me along. I had almost forgotten how to have fun.”

He looked curious, and he had turned his head enough so she could see his bad side. “What do you mean by that?”

“Drew, my ex-fiancé, doesn’t like horses or camping. His idea of being outdoors is going to a football game. When he wants to have fun, he goes to a club. He hates my music too. I love country, but he can’t stand it.”

Jake frowned. “Then why did you agree to marry him?”

Peyton tossed her hair to the front and squeezed a little more water from it. “I thought I loved him.”

“Even though you were so different?”

“Even so. Don’t get me wrong; Drew could be loads of fun, but since we broke up, I’ve realized everything we did had to be on his terms. I always gave in to him; he never considered my feelings, but at the time…”

“At the time what?” he probed, his face alight with interest.

“At the time it didn’t seem so bad,” Peyton admitted. “Drew was exciting, and everyone envied me because we were getting married.” She smiled. “Drew was considered a good catch, especially for a girl like me.”

Jake’s face turned dark. “What’s that supposed to mean, a girl like you? There’s nothing wrong with you.”

“Thanks for saying so, but most people in Milford thought I was marrying above myself.”

“How did Drew’s people feel about you?” Jake asked. He brushed several small branches from the rock with his foot.

“Oh, they liked me. They wanted us to get married because they thought I was a good influence on Drew.”

“Do you regret it?” He stared intently into her eyes. “If you had it to do over, would you leave him at the altar?”

Peyton laughed and bumped him with her shoulder. “I sure would. The more I think about him, the clearer things become. I escaped a fate worse than death when I got away from him.”

Jake’s shoulders shook with laughter. “I’ve never heard anyone really use that term before.”

“Jake Douglas, are you laughing at me?”

“Yeah.”

“Then take this!” As she spoke, Peyton dipped her foot into the lake and splattered him with icy water.

“That’s cold!” He splattered her back.

Peyton squealed and gave him another dose of lake water. By the time the splashing ended both of them were soaked. “We might as well swim again,” Peyton said. “We’re wet anyway.”

Jake made no answer. He jumped off the rock and dived into the lake with Peyton right behind him. She liked the way he moved through the chilly water as though he had become an aquatic creature himself. She also liked the way those muscles in his chest gleamed in the moonlight. Patrick was taller, but Jake …

Okay, what about Jake. You couldn’t say he was a handsome man now; not with those scars, but…

But what? Why couldn’t she figure it out? Jake was… Wounded? Competent? Interesting? Did that account for her …her… blast it! If she kept this up she’d go nuts, and she had come here to have a good time.

Resolutely, she consigned these disturbing thoughts to the back of her mind. She’d think about it later.

Jake finally called a halt to their play. “We have to get up early tomorrow. We’d better get back to the camp.”

“I’m hungry again. Do we have anything to eat?”

He arched his eyebrows. “Is the pope Catholic?”

When they got back to camp they saw Jake’s helpers had built a campfire. “Do we have anything to toast?” Peyton wondered.

“Over the fire?”

“Yeah.”

Jake pretended to think about it. “We could make some s’mores.”

Peyton’s laugher rang out across the campground. “You planned that, didn’t you?”

“Naturally.”

She smacked his shoulder for his smugness, and they joined the group around the fire and made their s’mores. Peyton had feared Jake wouldn’t join them, but he did. He probably thought the darkness hid the worst of his scars, and truthfully it did. Still, he sat slightly to the side so the worst of his scars faced the forest, not the people, but he did participate.

Morris Feldman’s s’more dropped onto his lap, but he picked it up and ate it anyway. “Hot,” he mumbled as he sucked air into his mouth. “Jake, one of the maids told me Rest Thy Head is supposed to be haunted. Have you ever seen a ghost?”

Jake paused to lick marshmallow from his fingers. “A couple of times I’ve seen something.”

An expectant air filled the crowd. They had everyone’s attention now. “What did you see?” Feldman asked.

Jake pursed his lips in a way that made Peyton think he intended to scare everyone. “Once I went to the second floor to do some repairs and saw a mist swirling in the air in front of the window on the landing.”

“It was probably just dust in the sunshine,” Morris disagreed. “I’ve seen dust motes dancing in the sunshine many times.”

“It didn’t look like dust.” Jake’s head tilted to the side as he considered his memory. “The mist was thicker, and it didn’t seem to just float in the air; it swirled.”

Feldman grunted. “It would take more than that to convince me.”

“I’ve seen curtains sway in the breeze too,” Jake continued, “even when the windows were closed and the heating or air conditioning wasn’t running.”

Mrs. Feldman slid a little closer to her husband. “Have you ever actually seen a person, I mean an apparition?”

Jake hesitated and the thoughtful look on his face made Peyton think he wasn’t trying to scare anyone now. “Maybe. Several times I’ve been outside working, and when I looked back at the inn I thought I saw a face watching me, but the moment I blinked it disappeared.”

“Why does it surprise you to see someone looking out the window?” Feldman scoffed. “You do run an inn.”

Jake struggled to explain himself. It seemed to Peyton that he wanted to understand what he’d seen as much as he wanted his guests to understand. “That’s true, but…well, it didn’t look right some way or other. I know that isn’t a good description, but it’s the best I can do.”

“Would you say that perhaps it looked a bit insubstantial?” tiny Lucille Chastain broke in.

“Yes, I think so.” He nodded. “Yeah, that’s a good description.”

Lucille smiled. “Most of the time you can see through them.”

“You sound as if you believe in ghosts,” Nanette the teacher observed.

“Oh, I do. In fact, I’ve written several books on the subject. Jake, you said you saw a swirling mist on the landing, right?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

Her voice was so matter of fact it lent credibility to her words. “I’m not surprised. Some people think spirits take a vaporous form before they become full apparitions.”

Peyton repressed a grin when one of Jake’s men looked over his shoulder and stared into the darkness with a wary expression on his face.

“Why would a spirit hang around Rest Thy Head?” Feldman snorted. “Honestly, Lucille.”

“Honestly, Morris. Apparitions often haunt older homes. Hotels, theaters, and cemeteries too.”

“What do you think ghosts are?” Peyton asked, playing along. She knew good and well there was no such thing as a ghost. If there were, she’d have seen one by now. Hadn’t she lived in an older home her entire life? She’d been to plenty of cemeteries and theaters too. Besides that, her room at the inn was supposed to be haunted.

Lucille smiled at Peyton. “Oh, that’s a hard one. The experts haven’t reached any hard and fast conclusions. Some say ghosts are residual energy left behind after a person passes. Others say ghosts are a telepathic image. A sensitive person might pick up on events as they happened years ago. Some even say when you see a ghost you truly are seeing another time.”

Peyton shivered in spite of the fact she didn’t believe in ghosts. It was dark now, and there was no light anywhere except that from the campfire. The darkness made it easier to believe.

“I always heard ghosts are the remains of a human being who died,” Jake said as he added more wood to the fire.

“Oh, sure. That’s the most common explanation,” Lucille agreed.

Nanette slid a bit closer to her husband. “What do you believe?”

“I think ghosts are the spirits of people who don’t realize that they’re dead. They play all kinds of tricks trying to get people to recognize them. Others are so attached to a place or person they refuse to move on into the next reality.”

In the dark, Jake touched the side of his face. “Do you think ghosts are the spirits of people who die violently? Like in war, maybe. I’ve heard that before.”

“That’s entirely possible.” Lucille smiled warmly at Jake. “Have you ever noticed an orb of light moving through the inn?”

He shook his head. “No, but one of the guests complained of it last summer.”

“Interesting.” Lucille paused for a bite of her s’more. “They most commonly are seen outside, but sometimes they do move indoors. Most experts think this must be the easiest way for spirits to travel because we see a lot of them. Most types of ghosts can move fairly quickly in this form.”

“Do you mean to say there’s more than one type of ghost?” Feldman boomed.

Lucille looked surprised he would even ask. “Of course. There are vortex ghosts, dark entities, poltergeists, residue hauntings, energy ghosts, ghost lights, ribbons of energy, oh lots of things.”

Nanette looked vaguely alarmed. “Are ghosts harmful? Would they try to hurt us?”

Lucille shrugged and gave a little moue. “It depends on who you ask, but most people think not.”

The wind picked up, and Peyton slid a little closer to Jake. It was cool after dark at this elevation. “Nobody’s asked me about the ghost. I sleep in the room that’s supposed to be haunted, and I’ve never seen or heard a thing.”

“See?” Feldman gloated. “No ghost.”

Peyton suddenly remembered the face that had watched her from the window as she went toward the pool the other night. Nah, she didn’t believe in ghosts. It had been a trick of the light and nothing more. “My sister, Ashley, believes in ghosts.”

Mr. Feldman stuck a second s’more over the fire. “Did she see one?”

Peyton shrugged. “She thinks she did. It happened when she was about twelve. My mother didn’t like animals, but we begged for a pet so she finally gave in and got us a kitten. It attached itself to Ashley. It followed her around from the time she got up until the time she went to bed at night. It slept with her too.

“On July Fourth, Mother decided to take us to a fireworks display downtown. We all piled in the car, but when Mother started the engine we heard a terrible sound. We jumped out of the car, and Mother raised the hood. We saw that poor little kitten caught in the fan belt.

“He lived for a few moments, but that was all. Ashley was inconsolable. She mourned him for weeks, but one morning she got up and was all smiles. Mother asked her why she was so happy, and she said Coco, that was the cat’s name, had visited her last night.

“It worried Mother something awful, but Ashley never saw the cat again, so Mother decided it must have been a dream.”

Feldman spoke as Jake’s helper left the circle to get another log for the fire. “It probably was.”

“Yes, but Ashley took the cat’s picture. Mother had given her a camera for her birthday, so she took Coco’s picture that night.”

“What did it show?” Jake asked. He stretched his legs toward the fire and made Peyton’s stomach give a little lurch when she saw his thigh muscles bulge beneath his jeans.

Ignoring his legs, she focused on her story. “The picture showed Coco sitting on the foot of Ashley’s bed washing himself, but you could see right through him.”

“I don’t believe it,” Feldman insisted. His face looked almost belligerent. “I don’t believe in human ghosts, and I certainly don’t believe in animal ghosts.”

Peyton laughed. “I don’t either. I think Ashley took the cat’s picture before he died, and her camera malfunctioned and gave her some sort of double exposure or something.”

The wind blew gauzy wisps of clouds across the moon. The temperature seemed to drop several degrees. “There are documented cases of animal ghosts appearing,” Lucille insisted as she pulled her girly pink jacket tighter around her. She was so small Peyton imagined she felt the cold more than most people.

Conversation broke out all around the fire as everyone proclaimed his or her belief, but Peyton’s story seemed to be the signal for everyone to go to bed.

“We’ll be on the move very early,” Jake warned.

He got up and held out his hand for Peyton. “Let me walk you to your tent. Thanks for sharing your story. Telling tall tales by the fire is a huge part of camping out.”

Peyton brushed off the seat of her jeans. “I don’t believe in ghosts, but the story is real.”

“I know. Fun, isn’t it?”

Peyton giggled. “It sure was.”

She gave Jake’s hand a squeeze and went inside her tent to sleep.

***

Jake checked on the fire and made sure everything in camp was secure, and then he went into the tent he shared with the two guys who had readied the camp for their arrival.

Why did she have to touch him all the time? She was constantly holding his hand, and just now around the fire she was molded to his side. Did she think it didn’t bother him? Did she think being scarred meant he didn’t have any interest in women? He wished with all of his heart she hadn’t come with him, but he couldn’t think of any reason to tell her no when she asked.

He prayed that before long she’d decide to go back home and get a job. If she stayed at Rest Thy Head with Patrick, he didn’t know if he could live there or not. Could he stand to see her kiss and touch Patrick all the time?

No, he couldn’t, and where on earth could he go? Something had to be done about this situation, but for the life of him he didn’t know what.