Wanted: One Ghost (31 page)

“According to the doctor, about a month or so along.” Bob quirked his brow, a small smile playing on his lips. “Who’s the lucky father?”

April sighed, shaking her head in disbelief, letting the tears fall. She didn’t give a damn anymore who saw her crying. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” She didn’t believe it, and she’d been there. Thinking about trying to explain James Addison’s reincarnation to Bob right now seemed impossible. She didn’t think she’d be able to tell him the whole story anyway. And how could she get him to believe she’d made love to a ghost?

She laughed at the idea. But the laughter wasn’t cathartic.
Congratulations, James, your sperm is immortal
.

“Are you laughing or crying, April?” Dr. Moreland grabbed a handful of hospital issued, rough ply, tissue and handed them to her. “Are they happy tears or sad?”

Truthfully, she couldn’t answer either one of those questions. She didn’t know what she was doing. Whether she was happy or sad remained to be determined at a later date.

“April?” Bob smoothed a hand over her hair, trying to calm her. “Relax. You’re hyperventilating. This isn’t good. Come on, relax, and slow your breathing down.” He tried to get her to breathe rhythmically. “Remember the techniques we went over when you studied metaphysics? Slow and easy,” he said calmly.

She looked up at him with incredibility. She was pregnant with James’s baby. And he wanted her to relax? “Screw metaphysics…and breathing. I’m going to puke!”

The mill site was blanketed in white. Pristine snow covered the fields. A rented sedan parked off the side of the road just a few feet ahead told her someone else was here.

She wanted to be alone. This was the only place left where she might have a connection with her ghosts. She needed them to feel at peace. She laughed silently. Odd thing to think—needing ghosts to make her happy. But she didn’t feel it. Not like she had. It was just an empty piece of land now. Her thigh-high boots trudged through the crust packed snow. The sound of the isolated crunch of her feet a soothing balm as the open land stood before her. She followed a set of deep foot prints, wondering who could be out here. The footprints trailed down over the slope of the ridge. When she topped the rise, the figure of a tall, broad shouldered male stood in silhouette against the ridge-line. Her heart flip-flopped in her chest. Her pace quickened, fearing the apparition would disappear before her eyes. It didn’t. Dare she hope?

“James?” she called out. Was it really him? The figure, still a good ways away, turned towards her. “James!” She squealed with delight, tears clogging her throat. It was him! She ran but came up short when he didn’t return her fervor. He gave her a strange, eager smile.

“Dr. Branford? I didn’t realize you would be out here.” The man held out his hand in greeting. “I thought you might still be recovering.”

This wasn’t James, but his look-alike. Her heart sank as she tried desperately to recover her disappointment. She wouldn’t faint now. It would give Kenneth a complex for sure. “Mr. Miles. I didn’t expect you to still be in town.”

“Well, I didn’t have a chance to talk with you after you took ill. I do hope you’re feeling better. Dr. Moreland said you’d been exhausted, working long hours to handle my case. I didn’t expect you to wear yourself out physically.”

He didn’t know about her condition. She wasn’t showing yet so no need to let on about her pregnancy. Besides, it was too complicated to explain.
Yeah, I’m also pregnant with your ancestor’s baby
.

“I had some other family issues I had to deal with. I guess between it all, I didn’t take care of myself.”

“Ah yes, I heard about your aunt’s house, I’m sorry. It must have been very taxing on you.” He put his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. “Since we will be working together, I will make sure it doesn’t happen again. I can’t have my historical research partner passing out on me during interviews while we are working to restore my…err…ancestor’s home. You’ll be assigned a personal secretary and assistant to run your errands while in my employ.”

“You’re restoring the old mill site?” April was taken aback, and then his offer stunned her. “You’re hiring me to work for you?”

“Not for me, with me,” he corrected. “I’m overseeing the construction process personally. It means a lot to me, and I was hoping we could work together.”

“You’ll have a full benefits package, a higher salary than what you could receive from the university you’d applied to. I had my people check into it.”

He was a cocky, self-assured, presumptuous ass. She didn’t care how much he looked like James. He wasn’t James. As much as she’d enjoyed the later emails she’d received from him during her research, the man was a bit intimidating and high handed.
He’s a billionaire! Of course he would have the traits of a monarch.
Did he assume she would jump at his offer? No matter how good it was?

“What makes you think I’ll work for you, Mr. Miles?”

He smiled and his silver-gray eyes twinkled mischievously.
Damn your eyes, Kenneth Miles!
They reminded her so much of James’s when he was up to no good.

“I was hoping we’d moved beyond formalities, Dr. Branford. I wish you would call me Kenneth. This is 2012 after all.”

April looked up at him with a bit of shock. “What did you say?” It sounded so familiar. Like when she had told James the same thing during their romantic dinner.

“I said I wish you would call me Kenneth, or Ken. I thought with everything we’ve been through these past few months we might have moved on to something less formal.”

“Everything we’ve been through?” She didn’t want to encourage him to think a few emails exchanged in the name of business meant they had anything more than a professional connection. Calling each other by their given names would be disastrous to her well-being. Having him say her name in the same sexy English brogue as James had used would destroy her.

“I feel a connection to you through James. I don’t know if I can explain it.” He looked around the wastelands. “What do you see for the mill site? What’s your vision?” he asked.

Was he testing her?

This was a safer topic. She could handle talking ‘business’ much easier than formalities.

“I want to see James’s dream brought back to life. He loved the lands, the people who worked for him, the mill, and what it meant to the locals,” she spoke softly, her throat constricted with painful emotion.

Kenneth nodded. “I feel James Addison would approve of your vision.”

They spent most of the afternoon walking the land, scoping out the foundation of the house, the mill, even the location of Daniel’s future home James was going to help him build, just down by the creek where an old willow tree grew.

Kenneth surprised her with an uncanny ability to know where things were. He didn’t seem at all what she had expected. Not only did his physical presence shock her, but she’d assumed he would be gruff and demanding. Other than his earlier presumptuous offer, he seemed almost likable. For one of the world’s top financial kings, he was surprisingly soft-spoken and quite intuitive.

As they started back to their cars, April couldn’t help but laugh.

“What’s so humorous, Dr. Branford?”

“You’ve been reading too many of the letters James sent to his sister.”

“Elsbeth’s letters?” His brow quirked the same cocky way James’s used to. “Why do you say that?”

“They must have detailed all the imagery to Kings Mill. You have an uncanny knack for knowing details about a place gone for so long.” April’s chin tilted in a challenge.

“Perhaps.” He smiled at her. “Or perhaps I have a bit of James Addison in me.”

***

James didn’t want to disturb April. He’d already pissed her off earlier this afternoon at the mill site when he’d claimed to have a bit of James Addison in him. He hadn’t meant to cause her distress. He’d only wanted her to question him on his knowledge about Kings Mill. He wanted to push her buttons to find out who he really was. She either couldn’t see it, or didn’t want to believe it. He could understand. It would be difficult to explain. But he assumed, she of all people, could grasp reincarnation.

She looked so peaceful, carefully arranging a small poinsettia plant near the block of marble. James approached her quietly, not wanting to disturb her and yet the urgency to be with her, to comfort her, tell her everything would be all right, ate at him.

She kissed her fingertips and placed them on the stone briefly before she stood. He reached out, gave into his impulse, and tugged on her braid. Startled, April gasped and turned to smack him. James reached out automatically, grabbing her arms to steady her.

“James!”

Yes
, his mind screamed.

He smiled, trying to get her to smile in return. “I guess I do look like him a bit. His portrait is over my mantle in Sunderbury.”

She’d called him James!
She’d also called him by James’s name as she’d run towards him at the mill site earlier this morning. She looked down at his hands, still gripping her upper arms. He slowly released her, backing up a few steps, to give her space.

“What are you doing here? Are you following me?” she asked, walking away hastily.

He thought momentarily and frowned. “Matter of fact, I am.” He stopped abruptly. “Does that make me a stalker?” He shrugged and picked up his step again. April was walking backward, keeping him in her wary sights, her hands jammed in the pockets of her navy pea coat. This all seemed so familiar; so long ago, and yet only a short time, too.

“Yes. You are a stalker.” She pointed out. “If you want me to work for you—”

Mildly hurt and confused he jogged up to her and stopped as she stopped. “Not for me, with me, remember?”

“Tomato…tomaut-o.”

“How about dinner? Is it too much to ask? Most women jump at the chance for dinner with me.”

“I’m not ‘most women,’” April replied.

“No, you’re not. You’re like no other woman I’ve met, April Branford. I can’t stop thinking about you.”

She shied away from him like a fox being chased by hounds.

“Dinner? I promise I won’t ask for more than what you are willing to give. Let me prove to you we would be good together, professionally,” he added for her benefit. He smiled his most charming smile, trying to get her to loosen up, until he saw her eyes cloud with grief.

“I don’t want to go to dinner with you. It’s not you, Mr. Miles, it’s me. I’ve been through a rough relationship lately and everything you do just reminds me of him. I don’t want to be hurt again.”

“I would never hurt you, April,” James said softly.

Her name rolled off his tongue like when he’d said it to her in the past. Her eyes glittered with some unspoken emotion.
Come on, damn it! Remember me, April. Give me something to go on, to start the conversation…to give you some clue.

“He never thought he would either. But he did.”

“Maybe he didn’t do it intentionally.” He shrugged casually and played his trump card. “We can’t control fate. It works in mysterious ways.”

Her jaw tightened visibly.
That’s it baby, fight me! Tell me how much fate hurts us.
If eyes could shoot fire, he would be burned alive with the glare she stabbed him with.

“Please tell me you don’t believe in fate.”

“I used to think I controlled everything around me. My destiny was based on what I did, who I associated with. My daily routine was scheduled down to a fine time-line someone typed up for me every week. Until my accident.”

“What happened then?”

He took her face in his hands. “An angel saw me and made me real. She woke me from death’s door after being in limbo for so long, and I felt like I’d been given a second chance at living a real life. I was given a second chance to be human again, to share it with someone special. Fate knows where we are supposed to be.” He wasn’t describing the accident in London, he was describing the night they’d met on the ghost tour.

Seeing April’s eyes mist over and drop tears down her flushed cheeks broke his heart. She angrily wiped them away with the back of her hands.

“You’re wrong! Fate doesn’t exist. You’re here because of your interest in your past, I’m here because you hired me, and tomorrow I can leave and start over somewhere else, because it’s my choice!”

She turned and walked away from him. He would give her space. He didn’t have any other choice. She only saw him as Kenneth Miles, even with the subtle hints. What did he have to do to make her see him for who he really was?

***

“What did you do to April?”

Upon walking into the new building for the future visitor center/historical society, James wasn’t prepared to be blasted by Dr. Freelane. Very few people had ever cornered him and those who had ended up regretting it. But that was the old him. He knew Beth for what she was, a friend to April and him, but still feeling her way around Kenneth.

He was taken aback, not sure what to say.

“It’s bad enough you look like her former boyfriend who died less than a month ago. But now you waltz into her life and do something to hurt her?” Beth crossed her arms over her chest and leaned into the doorway. “What did you say to her?”