The Winter Spirit ARE (5 page)

“Yeah, he sometimes rattles the pans when I’m in the kitchen by myself. I knew he could move things, but I always thought it was some weird telekinesis thing or something. Not actually him. You know?”

“Hmm, yes.” Elisa’s eyes narrowed like she was deep in thought. “Have you ever wondered if it wouldn’t be kinder to try and get him exorcised?”

“What?” While being stuck in the same spot for eternity sounded pretty bleak, the word alone made me think of very bad things. “Isn’t that for evil spirits? And how would one advertise for such a thing and not end up with a bunch of lunatics responding?”

She shrugged. “Maybe exorcism isn’t the right word, but there has to be something we can do for him. I mean, the Lake House can’t be the only real haunted house in the world. And maybe he wants to leave.”

“He probably would have already, if that were the case.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I wondered though. “I’ll ask him,” I said. I felt a bit ashamed I’d never tried to do that before. I’d always treated Gabe—Gabriel as a part of the B&B package but never wondered how he felt about the whole situation.

“We better get back,” Elisa said with a grin. “Or they’ll think we’re getting up to no good in here.”

My face burst into flame and I quickly opened the door. “So just eggs then,” I said loudly, making everything ten times worse.

Chapter 3

“Oh, are you going into town?” Owen wiped his mouth with a napkin and rose to his feet. “I’ll come with you. Let me just go grab my jacket.”

“Actually, can we come too?” Mrs. Anderson asked. “Our cars are buried under two feet of snow and we’d like to do some more Christmas shopping.” She gave Mr. Houzer a coy smile and I wanted to scowl at the cheating pair of cheaters.

“Sure,” I said, because I was a professional B&B owner. Owen rushed upstairs leaving his plate where it was, while the other two carried theirs over to the sink.

I frowned slightly, Gabriel’s words coming unbidden to my mind.
And that Owen fellow. I don’t like him.

I pushed it aside. Owen’d looked scrumptious this morning. Wearing a soft purple cashmere cardigan I wanted to curl up and go to sleep in, and a pair of tight jeans that showed off his slender, long legs. He was a walking wet dream.

“It’s below zero again,” Elisa said. “So you might want to put on an extra sweater.”

I glanced down at my thin Henley and agreed. “Tell them I’ll be right down.”

I’d made an art of running up the stairs two at a time while making no noise at all, and hurried into my bedroom. Deciding to brush my teeth—for good hygiene, no other blond haired, brown eyed, kissable reasons—I walked into my bathroom and found Gabriel waiting for me, leaning against some invisible post in my mirror. Gone was the soft, introspective man I’d met the night before. Here was Gabriel the Debonair Ghost, arrived to make my life difficult. I groaned at the twinkle in his eye.

“What?” I asked.

“I can do mild telekinesis,” he said, smirking.

“You know eavesdropping isn’t polite,” I told him primly as I checked out my toothbrush.

He waved that away. “I can’t help what I overhear. Owen’s going too?”

“He is.”

Gabriel’s eyes narrowed a little, but his expression smoothed out fast. “Then you should put on that soft green sweater. And brush your hair.”

I looked at the mess of curls on my head. “My hair’s fine.” I’d think about the sweater.

He raised an eyebrow at me. “Your hair—while admittedly charming first thing in the morning—could do with some tidying up.”

My hairbrush rattled, lifted into the air, and started nudging the back of my head. I tried to ignore it in as dignified a way as possible and squeezed toothpaste on my toothbrush.

Out of the corner of my eyes I saw Gabriel pretending to be casual as he studied his nails. “So your two other guests are going Christmas shopping for each other?” he asked. I dried my mouth and finally tried to snatch the hairbrush out of the air. It pirouetted out of my reach and I scowled at him. He looked no different than usual, but confidence definitely suited him. I wondered if his hair was dark or blond under all that pomade or whatever it was covered in.

“Looks like it,” I grumbled. “I wonder what their spouses would do if they knew.” The brush clattered to the floor and the rakish smile disappeared instantly from his face. Gabriel looked so crestfallen my heart twanged. “What is it?”

“They’re…married?”

“Well, they were both wearing wedding rings when they got here, so unless they’re widowed, I assume so. Yes. Why? What do you c—” I remembered his infinite attempts to get Elisa and me alone in a room. “Gabriel! Have you been meddling?” I demanded.

His strong jaw flexed and his mirror image rippled like he was a reflection under water. “I thought…” He covered his face. “Oh God.”

Alarmed, I reached out but of course my fingers met nothing but cold, hard glass. “What’s the matter?”

He shook his head. “Nothing. It—it doesn’t matter.” He began to fade but I didn’t think I’d ever forget the agony on his face.

“Wait!” I called out. To my surprise he did. He looked at me warily. “I—can I ask you a question? I mean, if this isn’t a good time…”

Gabriel laughed softly but he sounded sad. “Time is all I have, Nathaniel. Ask away.”

I felt like an idiot, but I needed to know. “Is there anything I can do? Me or Elisa? To help you out of here, I mean. If that’s what you want. You’re welcome to stay, obviously. We were thinking maybe you were stuck here, and if you need help of any kind we can—” I snapped my mouth shut. Gabriel’s eyes were still on me, still sad, but his expression had softened a little. He had a nice, full mouth.

“I appreciate that,” he said, then hesitated. “There’s not much you can do.”

“Not much?” I tried. “So there’s something?”

“Yeah.” He turned his face away, offering me his profile, and I again wondered what he was looking at, what he saw, in that world of his.

“What? What can I do?”

He smiled at whatever he was seeing. “You could fall in love,” he said, and then he was gone.

I gaped at my own reflection for a solid minute before realizing I looked ridiculous doing that, and then hurried out of my bedroom. As I passed Owen’s door, I heard it rattle.

“Owen? You okay?”

“The door is stuck,” he called out. “I was just about to give you a call.”

I tried the door handle and it gave like it had just been oiled. Owen gaped at me.

“I don’t understand. I’ve been trying for a while. It’s like this place is haunted.”

I gave a watery laugh. “Maybe it is, you never know!”

With a scowl, Owen stopped me in the hallway. “Did you do that on purpose? Lock me in there? Because that’s not funny.”

“What? No, Jesus. Why would I do that?” I shrugged him off, taken aback. I wanted to talk to Elisa to see what she’d make of Gabriel, but the others were already waiting in the reception area. I had no choice but to lead them to the garage and get in my car.

“You okay?” Owen asked after a couple of silent miles. He’d grabbed the front seat, and by the looks of things, Mr. and Mrs. Unfaithful didn’t seem to mind. I glanced at their entwined hands. Yup, married. And not to each other.

“I’m okay,” I said gruffly, probably startling Owen into silence because he didn’t say anything else, and I felt bad. “Hey, it looks like they towed your car,” I told him when we passed the gardens.

“Yes, that’s why I’m going into town. I need a new rental.”

“Oh, right.” I felt awkward, but I couldn’t pinpoint why. I glanced in my rearview mirror. “Do you have any idea where you’d like to do your Christmas shopping? I’m going to Jackson. There’s a nice Main Street I can drop you off at, but it’s pretty cold.”

Mrs. Anderson lifted her head. She looked flushed and happy and it only soured my mood further. Why did I care so much? It was none of my business. “Actually, I found a little mall on the internet, right off the—”

“Yeah, I know where it is,” I interrupted, and conversation in the car died out again.

Shit. I was being a complete jerk. I wanted to make amends a little and tell them some quirky fact about our town but it was literally the most uneventful place on earth. Besides, when I looked in my mirror again, they were making out in my backseat like teenagers.

Seriously?

Owen made a face of disgust that almost had me sputter out a laugh. For the rest of the ride, I kept my eyes on the road and turned up the music to drown out any potential smacking noises.

“Are you sure they didn’t know each other?” Owen asked when I’d dropped the tonsil lickers off. “They were…intense.”

“Two completely separate bookings,” I told him. “Made in different months. They arrived on different days.” I thought for a second. “They’re leaving on the same day, but I’m sure that’s coincidence. If they did know each other they went out of their way to pretend they didn’t during their first breakfast together, and what would be the point of that?” Unless they were already cheating and trying to hide it. Bastards.

“But you’re sure they’re married?”

“They’re both wearing rings.”

Owen mulled that over. “They could be widowed. Or divorced and not wanting to take their rings off.”

“Possible,” I muttered.
Unlikely
, I thought. But still, he had a point, and I needed to keep my opinions to myself so I wouldn’t offend them and cause them to leave a terrible review somewhere.

“Did you get cheated on?” Owen asked me gently when I pulled into a parking spot.

I shrugged. “Nah,” I said, unwilling to volunteer that particular piece of information.

“Oh good. You just seem so sensitive to it, that’s all.”

“It’s awful, I think. To cheat on someone. It seems like one of the worst things you can do to the person you’re supposed to love.”

“Yeah.” Owen’s gaze was far away for a second. “Maybe.”

Owen and I parted ways so he could rent his car and I could do my grocery shopping. As suspected, Elisa had sent me a whole list of things I needed beside eggs, and I grabbed a cart to start my round. It didn’t take long since I knew the store like the back of my hand, and while I loaded things in the truck, my phone dinged again.

“Elisa, if that’s you needing more stuff,” I grumbled, “you’re out of luck.” But it was an unknown number.

Car all sorted, will drive myself home. How about some coffee first, just me and you? —O.

I chewed my lip. Tempting as it was to caffeinate myself while basking in Owen’s beauty, something else was eating away at me.

Need to run some more errands, sorry,
I texted back, and pocketed my phone. I had another hour before I needed to pick up my canoodling couple, so I got in the car and drove to our little library.

The Carnegie library in Jackson was a beautiful place built in the early 1900s and as a young teen trying to escape my grandmother’s house, I’d spent a lot of time there. Not so much recently, though, and it took me a while before I found the computers and got myself logged in.

At first I did a quick Google search, but just like Elisa’s, it came up empty. I went into the library’s own search engine and typed in
Gabriel Wickfield
. It came up with nothing again. I sat back and sighed, about to give up, when I saw a different search option, offering historical images.

On a whim, I tried it. Two photographs showed up. One was black and white of a bunch of children, clearly in a classroom. Beside the photograph was a list of information, including the name of the school—a building that had been torn down a long time ago—the year ‘1897’, and a bunch of children’s names. I scanned them all. Front row, second row, then there, on the third row
. Gabriel Wickfield
.

I squinted at all the kids, but the photograph was so grainy I couldn’t identify any of them as my friendly and handsome ghost.

I clicked back to the list and selected the second photograph. And there he was. Still black and white, still grainy, but undeniably Gabriel.
Photograph taken in 1915
, it said, and I had another one of those
holy shit
moments that rarely happened anymore because of Gabriel. I’d gotten so used to having him around, but Jesus.